THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

Professor  Henry  J.   Quayle 


PRESENTED  BY 

Mrs  Fannie  Q.  Paul 

Mrs  Annie  'Q.  Hadley 

Mrs  Elizabeth  Q.  Flowers 


MASTER-   TALES 


TEN     TALES 

BY 

FRANCOIS     COPPEE 


TRANSLATED        BY 

WALTER    LEARNED 

WITH    INTRODUCTION  BY 

BRANDER    MATTHEWS 

I LLU  STRAT  ED       BY 

ALBERT     E.    STERNER 


HARPER   &  BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
NEW      YORK      AND      LONDON 


C  E  A 
I 


Copyright,  1890,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rigfits  ratntd. 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION ix 

THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES 3 

TWO  CLOWNS 33 

A  VOLUNTARY  DEATH 5 1 

A  DRAMATIC  FUNERAL 73 

THE  SUBSTITUTE 9! 

AT   TABLE 119 

AN    ACCIDENT 139 

THE   SABOTS   OF   LITTLE   WOLFF    .       .       .163 

THE  FOSTER  SISTER 177 

MY    FRIEND   MEURTRIER        .....    203 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  conte  is  a  form  of  fiction  in  which  the 
French  have  always  delighted  and  in  which 
they  have  always  excelled,  from  the  days  of 
the  jongleurs  and  the  trouveres,  past  the  peri- 
ods of  La  Fontaine  and  Voltaire,  down  to 
the  present.  The  conte  is  a  tale,  something 
more  than  a  sketch,  it  may  be,  and  something 
less  than  a  short  story.  In  verse  it  is  at  times 
but  a  mere  rhymed  anecdote,  or  it  may  at- 
tain almost  to  the  direct  swiftness  of  a  bal- 
lad. The  Canterbury  Tales  are  contes,  most 
of  them,  if  not  all ;  and  so  are  some  of  the 
Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn.  The  free-and- 
easy  tales  of  Prior  were  written  in  imita- 
tion of  the  French  conte  en  vers ;  and  that, 
likewise,  was  the  model  of  more  than  one  of 
the  lively  narrative  poems  of  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson. 


X  INTRODUCTION. 

No  one  has  succeeded  more  abundantly 
in  the  conte  en  vers  than  M.  Coppee.  Where 
was  there  ever  anything  better  of  its  kind 
than  L  Enfant  de  la  Ballet  —  that  gentle 
portrait  of  the  Infant  Phenomenon,  framed 
in  a  chain  of  occasional  gibes  at  the  sordid 
ways  of  theatrical  managers  and  at  their  hos- 
tility towards  poetic  plays.  Where  is  there 
anything  of  a  more  simple  pathos  than 
Z'  Epavel  —  that  story  of  a  sailor's  son 
whom  the  widowed  mother  strives  vainly  to 
keep  from  the  cruel  waves  that  killed  his 
father.  (It  is  worthy  of  a  parenthesis  that 
although  the  ship  M.  Coppee  loves  best  is 
that  which  sails  the  blue  shield  of  the  City 
of  Paris,  he  knows  the  sea  also,  and  he  de- 
picts sailors  with  affectionate  fidelity.)  But 
whether  at  the  sea-side  by  chance,  or  more 
often  in  the  streets  of  the  city,  the  poet  seeks 
out  for  the  subject  of  his  story  some  incident 
of  daily  occurrence  made  significant  by  his 
interpretation  ;  he  chooses  some  character 
common-place  enough,  but  made  firmer  by 
conflict  with  evil  and  by  victory  over  self. 
Those  whom  he  puts  into  his  poems  are  still 
the  humble,  the  forgotten,  the  neglected,  the 
unknown  ;  and  it  is  the  feelings  and  the 


INTRODUCTION.  XI 

struggles  of  these  that  he  tells  us,  with  no 
maudlin  sentimentality,  and  with  no  dead 
set  at  our  sensibilities.  The  sub-title  Mrs. 
Stowe  gave  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  would 
serve  to  cover  most  of  M.  Coppee's  contes 
either  in  prose  or  verse ;  they  are  nearly 
all  pictures  of  life  among  the  lowly.  But 
there  is  no  forcing  of  the  note  in  his  paint- 
ing of  poverty  and  labor ;  there  is  no  harsh 
juxtaposition  of  the  blacks  and  the  whites. 
The  tone  is  always  manly  and  wholesome. 

La  Marchande  de  "Journaiix  and  the  other 
little  masterpieces  of  story  -  telling  in  verse 
are  unfortunately  untranslatable,  as  are  all 
poems  but  a  lyric  or  two,  now  and  then, 
by  a  happy  accident.  A  translated  poem  is 
a  boiled  strawberry,  as  some  one  once  put  it 
brutally.  But  the  tales  which  M.  Coppee 
has  written  in  prose — a  true  poet's  prose, 
nervous,  vigorous,  flexible,  and  firm  —  these 
can  be  Englished  by  taking  thought  and 
time  and  pains,  without  which  a  translation 
is  always  a  betrayal.  Ten  of  these  tales 
have  been  rendered  into  English  by  Mr. 
Learned  ;  and  the  ten  chosen  for  translation 
are  among  the  best  of  the  two  score  and 
more  of  M.  Coppee's  contes  en  prose.  These 


Xli  INTRODUCTION. 

ten  tales  are  fairly  representative  of  his  range 
and  variety.  Compare,  for  example,  the  pas- 
sion in  "  The  Foster  Sister,"  pure,  burning 
and  fatal,  with  the  Black  Forest  naivete  of 
"The  Sabots  of  Little  Wolff."  Contrast  the 
touching  pathos  of  "The  Substitute,"  poig- 
nant in  his  magnificent  self-sacrifice,  by  which 
the  man  who  has  conquered  his  shameful 
past  goes  back  willingly  to  the  horrible  life 
he  has  fled  from  that  he  may  save  from  a 
like  degradation  and  from  an  inevitable  mor- 
al decay  the  one  friend  he  has  in  the  world, 
all  unworthy  as  this  friend  is  —  contrast 
this  with  the  story  of  the  gigantic  deeds 
"  My  Friend  Meurtrier  "  boasts  about  unceas- 
ingly, not  knowing  that  he  has  been  discov- 
ered in  his  little  round  of  daily  domestic 
duties,  making  the  coffee  of  his  good  old 
mother  and  taking  her  poodle  out  fpr  a  walk. 
Among  these  ten  there  are  tales  of  all 
sorts,  from  the  tragic  adventure  of  "An  Acci- 
dent" to  the  pendent  portraits  of  the  "Two 
Clowns,"  cutting  in  its  sarcasm,  but  not 
bitter — from  "The  Captain's  Vices,"  which 
suggests  at  once  George  Eliot's  Silas  Mar- 
ner  and  Mr.  Austin  Dobson's  Tale  of  Poly- 
pheme,  to  the  sombre  revery  of  the  poet  "At 


INTRODUCTION.  Xlli 

Table,"  a  sudden  and  searching  light  cast  on 
the  labor  and  misery  which  underlies  the  lux- 
ury of  our  complex  modern  existence.  Like 
"At  Table,"  "A  Dramatic  Funeral  "  is  a  pict- 
ure more  than  it  is  a  story;  it  is  a  marvellous 
reproduction  of  the  factitious  emotion  of  the 
good-natured  stage-folk,  who  are  prone  to 
overact  even  their  own  griefs  and  joys.  "A 
Dramatic  Funeral "  seems  to  me  always  as 
though  it  might  be  a  painting  of  M.  Jean 
Beraud,  that  most  Parisian  of  artists,  just  as 
certain  stories  of  M.  Guy  de  Maupassant 
inevitably  suggest  the  bold  freedom  of  M. 
Forain's  sketches  in  black-and-white. 

An  ardent  admirer  of  the  author  of  the  sto- 
ries in  The  Odd  Number  has  protested  to  me 
that  M.  Coppee  is  not  an  etcher  like  M.  de 
Maupassant,  but  rather  a  painter  in  water- 
colors.  And  why  not  ?  Thus  might  we  call 
M.  Alphonse  Daudet  an  artist  in  pastels,  so 
adroitly  does  he  suggest  the  very  bloom  of 
color.  No  doubt  M.  Coppee's  contes  have 
not  the  sharpness  of  M.  de  Maupassant's, 
nor  the  brilliancy  of  M.  Daudet's — but  what 
of  it?  They  have  qualities  of  their  own;  they 
have  sympathy,  poetry,  and  a  power  of  sug- 
gesting pictures  not  exceeded,  I  think,  by 


those  of  either  M.  de  Maupassant  or  M. 
Daudet.  M.  Coppee's  street  views  in  Paris, 
his  interiors,  his  impressionist  sketches  of 
life  under  the  shadows  of  Notre  Dame,  are 
convincingly  successful.  They  are  intensely 
to  be  enjoyed  by  those  of  us  who  take  the 
same  keen  delight  in  the  varied  phases  of 
life  in  New  York.  They  are  not,  to  my  mind, 
really  rivalled  either  by  those  of  M.  de  Mau- 
passant, who  is  a  Norman  by  birth  and  a 
nomad  by  choice,  or  by  those  of  M.  Daudet, 
who  is  a  native  of  Provence,  although  now 
for  thirty  years  a  resident  of  Paris.  M.  Cop- 
pee  is  a  Parisian  from  his  youth  up,  and  even 
in  prose  he  is  a  poet ;  perhaps  this  is  why 
his  pictures  of  Paris  are  unsurpassable  in 
their  felicity  and  in  their  verity. 

It  may  be  fancy,  but  I  seem  to  see  also  a 
finer  morality  in  M.  CoppeVs  work  than  in 
M.  de  Maupassant's  or  in  M.  Daudet's  or  in 
that  of  almost  any  other  of  the  Parisian 
story-tellers  of  to-day.  In  his  tales  we 
breathe  a  purer  moral  atmosphere,  more 
wholesome  and  more  bracing.  It  is  not 
that  M.  Coppee  probably  thinks  of  ethics 
rather  than  aesthetics  ;  in  this  respect  his  at- 
titude is  undoubtedly  that  of  the  others ; 


INTRODUCTION.  XV 

there  is  no  sermon  in  his  song — or  at  least 
none  for  those  who  will  not  seek  it  for  them- 
selves ;  there  is  never  a  hint  of  a  preach- 
ment. But  for  all  that  I  have  found  in  his 
work  a  trace  of  the  tonic  morality  which  in- 
heres in  Moliere,  for  example,  also  a  Parisian 
by  birth,  and  also  in  Rabelais,  despite  his 
disguising  grossness.  This  finer  morality 
comes  possibly  from  a  wider  and  a  deeper 
survey  of  the  universe  ;  and  it  is  as  different 
as  possible  from  the  morality  which  is  exter- 
nally applied  and  which  always  punishes 
the  villain  in  the  fifth  act. 

It  is  of  good  augury  for  our  own  letters 
that  the  best  French  fiction  of  to-day  is  get- 
ting itself  translated  in  the  United  States, 
and  that  the  liking  for  it  is  growing  apace. 
Fiction  is  more  consciously  an  art  in  France 
than  anywhere  else — perhaps  partly  because 
the  French  are  now  foremost  in  nearly  all 
forms  of  artistic  endeavor.  In  the  short 
story  especially,  in  the  tale,  in  the  conte,  their 
supremacy  is  incontestable ;  and  their  skill 
is  shown  and  their  aesthetic  instinct  exem- 
plified partly  in  the  sense  of  form,  in  the 
constructive  method,  which  underlies  the 
best  short  stories,  however  trifling  these  may 


XVI  INTRODUCTION. 

appear  to  be,  and  partly  in  the  rigorous  sup- 
pression of  non-essentials,  due  in  a  measure, 
it  may  be,  to  the  example  of  Me'rimee.  That 
is  an  example  we  in  America  may  study  to 
advantage  ;  and  from  the  men  who  are  writ- 
ing fiction  in  France  we  may  gain  much. 
From  the  British  fiction  of  this  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  little  can  be  learned 
by  any  one — less  by  us  Americans  in  whom 
the  English  tradition  is  still  dominant.  When 
we  look  to  France  for  an  exemplar  we  may 
find  a  model  of  value,  but  when  we  copy  an 
Englishman  we  are  but  echoing  our  own 
faults.  "  The  truth  is,"  said  Mr.  Lowell  in 
his  memorable  essay  On  a  Certain  Conde- 
scension in  Foreigners — "  the  truth  is  that  we 
are  worth  nothing  except  so  far  as  we  have 
disinfected  ourselves  of  Anglicism." 

BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 


THE    CAPTAIN'S   VICES, 


CAPTAIN)1 


I. 

IT  is  of  no  importance, 
the  name  of  the  little  pro- 
vincial city  where  Captain 
Mercadier  —  twenty- six 
years  of  service,  twenty- 
two  campaigns,  and  three 
wounds  —  installed  him- 
self when 
he  was  re- 
tired on  a 
pension. 


»*£•,"• 


4  TEN    TALES    BY    FRANgOIS   COPPEE. 

It  was  quite  like  all  those  other  little  vil- 
lages which  solicit  without  obtaining  it  a 
branch  of  the  railway ;  just  as  if  it  were  not 
the  sole  dissipation  of  the  natives  to  go  ev- 
ery day,  at  the  same  hour,  to  the  Place  de 
la  Fontaine  to  see  the  diligence  come  in  at 
full  gallop,  with  its  gay  cracking  of  the  whips 
and  clang  of  bells. 

It  was  a  place  of  three  thousand  inhabi- 
tants— ambitiously  denominated  souls  in  the 
statistical  tables — and  was  exceedingly  proud 
of  its  title  of  chief  city  of  the  canton.  It 
had  ramparts  planted  with  trees,  a  pretty 
river  with  good  fishing,  a  church  of  the 
charming  epoch  of  the  flamboyant  Gothic, 
disgraced  by  a  frightful  station  of  the  cross, 
brought  directly  from  the  quarter  of  Saint 
Sulpice.  Every  Monday  its  market  was  gay 
with  great  red  and  blue  umbrellas,  and 
countrymen  filled  its  streets  in  carts  and 
carriages.  But  for  the  rest  of  the  week  it 
retired  with  delight  into  that  silence  and 


THE    CAPTAIN  S   VICES.  5 

solitude  which  made  it  so  dear  to  its  rustic 
population.  Its  streets  were  paved  with 
cobble-stones;  through  the  windows  of  the 
ground -floor  one  could  see  samplers  and 
wax-flowers  under  glass  domes,  and,  through 
the  gates  of  the  gardens,  statuettes  of  Napo- 
leon in  shell-work.  The  principal  inn  was 
naturally  called  the  Shield  of  France ;  and 
the  town -clerk  made  rhymed  acrostics  for 
the  ladies  of  society. 

Captain  Mercadier  had  chosen  that  place 
of  retreat  for  the  simple  reason  that  he  had 
been  born  there,  and  because,  in  his  noisy 
childhood,  he  had  pulled  down  the  signs  and 
plugged  up  the  bell-buttons.  He  returned 
there  to  find  neither  relations,  nor  friends, 
nor  acquaintances;  and  the  recollections  of 
his  youth  recalled  only  the  angry  faces  of 
shop-keepers  who  shook  their  fists  at  him 
from  the  shop -doors,  a  catechism  which 
threatened  him  with  hell,  a  school  which 
predicted  the  scaffold,  and,  finally,  his  de- 


6  TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

parture  for  his  regiment,  hastened  by  a  pa- 
ternal malediction. 

For  the  Captain  was  not  a  saintly  man ; 
the  old  record  of  his  punishment  was  black 
with  days  in  the  guard -house  inflicted  for 
breaches  of  discipline,  absences  from  roll- 
calls,  and  nocturnal  uproars  in  the  mess- 
room.  He  had  often  narrowly  escaped  los- 
ing his  stripes  as  a  corporal  or  a  sergeant, 
and  he  needed  all  the  chance,  all  the  license 
of  a  campaigning  life  to  gain  his  first  epau- 
let. Firm  and  brave  soldier,  he  had  passed 
almost  all  his  life  in  Algiers  at  that  time  when 
our  foot  soldiers  wore  the  high  shako,  white 
shoulder-belts  and  huge  cartridge-boxes. 
He  had  had  Lamoriciere  for  commander. 
The  Due  de  Nemours,  near  whom  he  re- 
ceived his  first  wound,  had  decorated  him,  and 
when  he  was  sergeant-major,  Pere  Bugrand 
had  called  him  by  his  name  and  pulled  his 
ears.  He  had  been  a  prisoner  of  Abd-el- 
Kader,  bearing  the  scar  of  a  yataghan  stroke 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  7 

on  his  neck,  of  one  ball  in  his  shoulder  and 
another  in  his  chest;  and  notwithstanding 
absinthe,  duels,  debts  of  play,  and  almond- 
eyed  Jewesses,  he  fairly  won,  with  the  point 
of  the  bayonet  and  sabre,  his  grade  of  cap- 
tain in  the  First  Regiment  of  Sharp-shooters. 

Captain  Mercadier  —  twenty-six  years  of 
service,  twenty -two  campaigns,  and  three 
wounds — had  just  retired  on  his  pension, 
not  quite  two  thousand  francs,  which,  joined 
to  the  two  hundred  and  fifty  francs  from  his 
cross,  placed  him  in  that  estate  of  honorable 
penury  which  the  State  reserves  for  its  old 
servants. 

His  entry  into  his  natal  city  was  without 
ostentation.  He  arrived  one  morning  on 
the  imperiale  of  the  diligence,  chewing  an 
extinguished  cigar,  and  already  on  good 
terms  with  the  conductor,  to  whom,  during 
his  journey,  he  had  related  the  passage  of 
the  Porte  de  Fer;  full  of  indulgence,  more- 
over, for  the  distractions  of  his  auditor,  who 


8     TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

often  interrupted  the  recital  by  some  oath 
or  epithet  addressed  to  the  off  mare.  When 
the  diligence  stopped  he  threw  on  the  side- 
walk his  old  valise,  covered  with  railway 
placards  as  numerous  as  the  changes  of 
garrison  that  its  proprietor  had  made,  and 
the  idlers  of  the  neighborhood  were  aston- 
ished to  see  a  man  with  a  decoration  —  a 
rare  thing  in  the  province — offer  a  glass  of 
wine  to  the  coachman  at  the  bar  of  an  inn 
near  by. 

He  installed  himself  at  once.  In  a  house 
in  the  outskirts,  where  two  captive  cows 
lowed,  and  fowls  and  ducks  passed  and  re- 
passed  through  the  gate -way,  a  furnished 
chamber  was  to  let.  Preceded  by  a  mas- 
culine-looking woman,  the  Captain  climbed 
the  stair-way  with  its  great  wooden  balusters, 
perfumed  by  a  strong  odor  of  the  stable,  and 
reached  a  great  tiled  room,  whose  walls  were 
covered  with  a  bizarre  paper  representing, 
printed  in  blue  on  a  white  background  and 


THE   CAPTAIN  S   VICES.  9 

repeated  infinitely,  the  picture  of  Joseph  Po- 
niatowski  crossing  the  Elster  on  his  horse. 
This  monotonous  decoration,  recalling  nev- 
ertheless our  military  glories,  fascinated  the 
Captain  without  doubt,  for,  without  concern- 
ing himself  with  the  uncomfortable  straw 
chairs,  the  walnut  furniture,  or  the  little  bed 
with  its  yellowed  curtain,  he  took  the  room 
without  hesitation.  A  quarter  of  an  hour 
was  enough  to  empty  his  trunk,  hang  up  his 
clothes,  put  his  boots  in  a  corner,  and  or- 
nament the  wall  with  a  trophy  composed  of 
three  pipes,  a  sabre,  and  a  pair  of  pistols. 
After  a  visit  to  the  grocer's,  over  the  way, 
where  he  bought  a  pound  of  candles  and 
a  bottle  of  rum,  he  returned,  put  his  pur- 
chase on  the  mantle-shelf,  and  looked  around 
him  with  an  air  of  perfect  satisfaction.  And 
then,  with  the  promptitude  of  the  camp,  he 
shaved  without  a  mirror,  brushed  his  coat, 
cocked  his  hat  over  his  ear,  and  went  for  a 
walk  in  the  village  in  search  of  a  cafe. 


10        TEN    TALES    BY'FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 
II. 

It  was  an  inveterate  habit  of  the  Captain 
to  spend  much  of  his  time  at  a  cafe.  It  was 
there  that  he  satisfied  at  the  same  time  the 
three  vices  which  reigned  supreme  in  his 
heart — tobacco,  absinthe,  and  cards.  It  was 
thus  that  he  passed  his  life,  and  he  could 
have  drawn  a  plan  of  all  the  places  where 
he  had  ever  been  stationed  by  their  tobacco 
shops,  cafes,  and  military  clubs.  He  never 
felt  himself  so  thoroughly  at  ease  as  when 
sitting  on  a  worn  velvet  bench  before  a 
square  of  green  cloth  near  a  heap  of  beer- 
mugs  and  saucers.  His  cigar  never  seemed 
good  unless  he  struck  his  match  under  the 
marble  of  the  table,  and  he  never  failed, 
after  hanging  his  hat  and  his  sabre  on  a 
hat-hook  and  settling  himself  comfortably, 
by  unloosing  one  or  two  buttons  of  his  coat, 
to  breathe  a  profound  sigh  of  relief,  and  ex- 
claim, 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  it 

"  That  is  better !" 

His  first  care  was,  therefore,  to  find  an  es- 
tablishment which  he  could  frequent,  and 
after  having  gone  around  the  village  with- 
out finding  anything  that  suited  him,  he 
stopped  at  last  to  regard  with  the  eye  of  a 
connoisseur  the  Cafe  Prosper,  situated  at 
the  corner  of  the  Place  du  Marche  and  the 
Rue  de  la  Pavoisse. 

It  was  not  his  ideal.  Some  of  the  details 
of  the  exterior  were  too  provincial :  the 
waiter,  in  his  black  apron,  for  example,  the 
little  stands  in  their  green  frames,  the  foot- 
stools, and  the  wooden  tables  covered  with 
waxed  cloth.  But  the  interior  pleased  the 
Captain.  He  was  delighted  upon  his  en- 
trance by  the  sound  of  the  bell  which  was 
touched  by  the  fair  and  fleshy  dame  du 
comptoir,  in  her  light  dress,  with  a  poppy- 
colored  ribbon  in  her  sleek  hair.  He  sa- 
luted her  gallantly,  and  believed  that  she 
sustained  with  sufficient  majesty  her  trium- 


12    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

phal  place  between  two  piles  of  punch-bowls 
properly  crowned  by  billiard-balls.  He 
ascertained  that  the  place  was  cheerful, 
neat,  and  strewn  evenly  with  yellow  sand. 
He  walked  around  it,  looking  at  himself  in 
the  glasses  as  he  passed;  approved  the  pan- 
els where  guardsmen  and  amazons  were 
drinking  champagne  in  a  landscape  filled 
with  red  holly-hocks ;  called  for  his  absinthe, 
smoked,  found  the  divan  soft  and  the  ab- 
sinthe good,  and  was  indulgent  enough  not 
to  complain  of  the  flies  who  bathed  them- 
selves in  his  glass  with  true  rustic  familiarity. 

Eight  days  later  he  had  become  one  of 
the  pillars  of  the  Cafe  Prosper. 

They  soon  learned  his  punctual  habits 
and  anticipated  his  wishes,  while  he,  in  turn, 
lunched  with  the  patrons  of  the  place  —  a 
valuable  recruit  for  those  who  haunted  the 
cafe,  folks  oppressed  by  the  tedium  of  a 
country  life,  for  whom  the  arrival  of  that 
new-comer,  past  master  in  all  games,  and 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES. 


an  admirable  raconteur  of  his  wars  and  his 
loves,  was  a  true  stroke  of  good -fortune. 
The  Captain  himself  was  delighted  to  tell  his 
stories  to  folks  who  were  still  ignorant  of  his 
repertoire.  There  were  ful- 
ly six  months  before  him  in 
which  to  tell  of  his  games, 
his  feats,  his  battles,  the 
retreat  of  Constantine,  the 
capture  of  Bou-Maza,  and 
the  officers'  receptions 
with  the  concomitant  in- 
toxication of  rum-punch. 

Human  weakness !  He 
was  by  no  means  sorry,  on 
his  part,  to  be  something 
of  an  oracle ;  he  from  whom  the  sub-lieu- 
tenants, new-comers  at  Saint-Cyr,  fled  dis- 
mayed, fearing  his  long  stories. 

His  usual  auditors  were  the  keeper  of 
the  cafe',  a  stupid  and  silent  beer-cask,  al- 
ways in  his  sleeved  vest,  and  remarkable 


14     TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

only  for  his  carved  pipe ;  the  bailiff,  a  scof- 
fer, dressed  invariably  in  black,  scorned  for 
his  inelegant  habit  of  carrying  off  what  re- 
mained of  his  sugar ;  the 
town-clerk,  the  gentleman 
of  acrostics,  a  person  of 
much  amiability  and  a  fee- 
ble constitution,  who  sent 
to  the  illustrated  journals 
solutions  of  enigmas  and  rebuses ; 
and,  lastly,  the  veterinary  surgeon  of 
the  place,  the  only  one  who,  from  his 
position  of  atheist  and  democrat,  was  al- 
lowed to  contradict  the  Captain.  This  prac- 
titioner, a  man  with  tufted  whiskers  and 
eye-glasses,  presided  over  the  radical  com- 
mittee of  electors,  and  when  the  curd  took 
up  a  little  collection  among  his  devotees  for 
the  purpose  of  adorning  his  church  with 
some  frightful  red  and  gilded  statues,  de- 
nounced, in  a  letter  to  the  Sihle,  the  cu- 
pidity of  the  Jesuits. 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  15 

The  Captain  having  gone  out  one  evening 
for  some  cigars  after  an  animated  political 
discussion,  the  aforesaid  veterinary  grum 
bled  to  himself  certain  phrases  of  heavy  ir- 
ritation concerning  "coming  to  the  point," 
and  "  a  mere  fencing-master,"  and  "  cutting 
a  figure."  But  as  the  object  of  these  vague 
menaces  suddenly  returned,  whistling  a 
march  and  beating  time  with  his  cane,  the 
incident  was  without  result. 

In  short,  the  group  lived  harmoniously 
together,  and  willingly  permitted  themselves 
to  be  presided  over  by  the  new-comer,  whose 
white  beard  and  martial  bearing  were  quite 
impressive.  And  the  small  city,  proud  of  so 
many  things,  was  also  proud  of  its  retired 
Captain. 

III. 

Perfect  happiness  exists  nowhere,  and 
Captain  Mercadier,  who  believed  that  he 


1 6        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

had  found  it  at  the  Cafe  Prosper,  soon  re 
covered  from  his  illusion. 

For  one  thing,  on  Mondays,  the  market- 
day,  the  Cafe  Prosper  was  untenantable. 

From  early  morning  it  was  overrun  with 
truck -peddlers,  farmers,  and  poultrymen. 
Heavy  men  with  coarse  voices,  red  necks, 
and  great  whips  in  their  hands,  wearing  blue 
blouses  and  otter-skin  caps,  bargaining  over 
their  cups,  stamping  their  feet,  striking  their 
fists,  familiar  with  the  servant,  and  bungling 
at  billiards. 

When  the  Captain  came,  at  eleven  o'clock, 
for  his  first  glass  of  absinthe,  he  found  this 
crowd  gathered,  and  already  half-drunk,  or- 
dering a  quantity  of  lunches.  His  usual  place 
was  taken,  and  he  was  served  slowly  and 
badly.  The  bell  was  continually  sounding, 
and  the  proprietor  and  the  waiter,  with  nap- 
kins under  their  arms,  were  running  distract- 
edly hither  and  thither.  In  short,  it  was  an  ill- 
omened  day,  which  upset  his  entire  existence. 


THE   CAPTAIN'S   VICES.  17 

Now,  one  Monday  morning,  when  he  was 
resting  quietly  at  home,  being  sure  that  the 
cafe  would  be  much  too  full  and  busy,  the 
mild  radiance  of  the  autumn  sun  persuaded 


him  to  go  down  and  sit  upon  the  stone  seat 
by  the  side  of  the  house.  He  was  sitting 
there,  depressed  and  smoking  a  damp  cigar, 
when  he  saw  coming  down  the  end  of  the 


1 8      TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPER. 

street — it  was  a  badly  paved  lane  leading 
out  into  the  country — a  little  girl  of  eight  or 
ten,  driving  before  her  a  half-dozen  geese. 

As  the  Captain  looked  carelessly  at  the 
child  he  saw  that  she  had  a  wooden  leg. 

There  was  nothing  paternal  in  the  heart 
of  the  soldier.  It  was  that  of  a  hardened 
bachelor.  In  former  days,  in  the  streets  of 
Algiers,  when  the  little  begging  Arabs  pur- 
sued him  with  their  importunate  prayers, 
the  Captain  had  often  chased  them  away 
with  blows  from  his  whip  ;  and  on  those  rare 
occasions  when  he  had  penetrated  the  no- 
madic household  of  some  comrade  who  was 
married  and  the  father  of  a  family,  he  had 
gone  away  cursing  the  crying  babies  and 
awkward  children  who  had  touched  with  their 
greasy  hands  the  gilding  on  his  uniform. 

But  the  sight  of  that  particular  infirmity, 
which  recalled  to  him  the  sad  spectacle  of 
wounds  and  amputations,  touched,  on  that 
account,  the  old  soldier.  He  felt  almost  a 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  19 

constriction  of  the  heart  at  the  sight  of  that 
sorry  creature,  half -clothed  in  her  tattered 
petticoats  and  old  chemise,  bravely  running 
along  behind  her  geese,  her  bare  foot  in  the 
dust,  and  limping  on  her  ill-made  wooden 
stump. 

The  geese,  recognizing  their  home,  turned 
into  the  poultry-yard,  and  the  little  one  was 
about  to  follow  them  when  the  Captain 
stopped  her  with  this  question  : 

"  Eh  !  little  girl,  what's  your  name  ?" 

"  Pierette,  monsieur,  at  your  service,"  she 
answered,  looking  at  him  with  her  great 
black  eyes,  and  pushing  her  disordered  locks 
from  her  forehead. 

"  You  live  in  this  house,  then  ?  I  haven't 
seen  you  before." 

"  Yes,  I  know  you  pretty  well,  though,  for 
I  sleep  under  the  stairs,  and  you  wake  me 
up  every  evening  when  you  come  home." 

"  Is  that  so,  my  girl  ?  Ah,  well,  I  must  walk 
on  my  toes  in  future.  How  old  are  you  ?" 


20        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

"Nine,  monsieur,  come  All-Saints  day." 
"  Is  the  landlady  here  a  relative  of  yours  ?" 
"  No,  monsieur,  I  am  in  service." 
"  And  they  give  you  ?" 
"  Soup,  and  a  bed  under  the  stairs." 
"  And  how  came  you  to  be  lame  like  that, 
my  poor  little  one  ?" 

"  By  the  kick  of  a  cow  when  I  was  five." 
"  Have  you  a  father  or  mother  ?" 
The  child  blushed  under  her  sunburned 
skin.     "I  came  from  the  Foundling  Hospi- 
tal," she  said,  briefly.     Then,  with  an  awk- 
ward courtesy,  she  passed  limping  into  the 
house,  and  the  Captain  heard,  as  she  went 
away  on  the  pavement  of  the  court,  the  hard 
sound  of  the  little  wooden  leg. 

Good  heavens  !  he  thought,  mechanically 
walking  towards  his  cafe',  that's  not  at  all  the 
thing.  A  soldier,  at  least,  they  pack  off  to 
the  Invalides,  with  the  money  from  his  medal 
to  keep  him  in  tobacco.  For  an  officer,  they 
fix  up  a  collectorship,  and  he  marries  some 


THE   CAPTAINS    VICES.  21 

where  in  the  provinces.  But  this  poor  girl, 
with  such  an  infirmity, — that's  not  at  all  the 
thing ! 

Having  established  in  these  terms  the  in- 
justice of  fate,  the  Captain  reached  the 
threshold  of  his  dear  cafe,  but  he  saw  there 
such  a  mob  of  blue  blouses,  he  heard  such  a 
din  of  laughter  and  click  of  billiard-balls, 
that  he  returned  home  in  very  bad  humor. 

His  room — it  was,  perhaps,  the  first  time 
that  he  had  spent  in  it  several  hours  of  the  day 
— looked  rather  shabby.  His  bed -curtains 
were  the  color  of  an  old  pipe.  The  fireplace 
was  heaped  with  old  cigar-stumps,  and  one 
could  have  written  his  name  in  the  dust  on 
the  furniture.  He  contemplated  for  some 
time  the  walls  where  the  sublime  lancer  of 
Leipsic  rode  a  hundred  times  to  a  glorious 
death.  Then,  for  an  occupation,  he  passed 
his  wardrobe  in  review.  It  was  a  lamentable 
series  of  bottomless  pockets,  socks  full  of 
holes,  and  shirts  without  buttons. 


22        TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

"I  must  have  a  servant,"  he  said. 

Then  he  thought  of  the  little  lame  girl. 

"That's  what  I'll  do.  I'll  hire  the  next 
little  room ;  winter  is  coming,  and  the  little 
thing  will  freeze  under  the  stairs.  She  will 
look  after  my  clothes  and  my  linen  and 
keep  the  barracks  clean.  A  valet,  how's 
that  ?" 

But  a  cloud  darkened  the  comfortable  pict- 
ure. The  Captain  remembered  that  quarter- 
day  was  still  a  long  way  off,  and  that  his 
account  at  the  Cafe  Prosper  was  assuming 
alarming  proportions. 

"  Not  rich  enough,"  he  said  to  himself. 
"  And  in  the  mean  time  they  are  robbing  me 
down  there.  That  is  positive.  The  board 
is  too  high,  and  that  wretch  of  a  veterinary 
plays  bezique  much  too  well.  I  have  paid 
his  way  now  for  eight  days.  Who  knows  ? 
Perhaps  I  had  better  put  the  little  one  in 
charge  of  the  mess,  soup  au  cafe'  in  the  morn- 
ing, stew  at  noon,  and  ragout  every  even- 


THE   CAPTAINS   VICES.  23 

ing  —  campaign  life,  in  fact.  I  know  all 
about  that.  Quite  the  thing  to  try." 

Going  out  he  saw  at  once  the  mistress  of 
the  house,  a  great  brutal  peasant,  and  the 
little  lame  girl,  who  both,  with  pitchforks  in 
their  hands,  were  turning  over  the  dung-heap 
in  the  yard. 

"  Does  she  know  how  to  sew,  to  wash,  to 
make  soup  ?"  he  asked,  brusquely. 

"  Who— Pierette  ?     Why  ?" 

"  Does  she  know  a  little  of  all  that  ?" 

"Of  course.  She  came  from  an  asylum 
where  they  learn  how  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves." 

"  Tell  me,  little  one,"  added,  the  Captain, 
speaking  to  the  child,  "  I  am  not  scaring 
you — no  ?  Well,  my  good  woman,  will  you 
let  me  have  her  ?  I  want  a  servant." 

"  If  you  will  support  her." 

"  Then  that  is  finished.  Here  are  twenty 
francs.  Let  her  have  to-night  a  dress  and  a 
shoe.  To-morrow  we'll  arrange  the  rest." 


24   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANgOIS  COPPEE. 

And,  with  a  friendly  tap  on  Pierette's 
cheek,  the  Captain  went  off,  delighted  that 
everything  was  concluded.  Possibly  he 
thought  he  would  have  to  cut  off  some 
glasses  of  beer  and  absinthe,  and  be  cau- 
tious of  the  veterinary's  skill  at  bezique. 
But  that  was  not  worth  speaking  of,  and  the 
new  arrangement  would  be  quite  the  thing. 


IV. 

Captain,  you  are  a  coward ! 

Such  was  the  apostrophe  with  which  the 
caryatides  of  the  Cafe  Prosper  hereafter 
greeted  the  Captain,  whose  visits  became 
rarer  day  by  day. 

For  the  poor  man  had  not  seen  all  the 
consequences  of  his  good  action.  The  sup- 
pression of  his  morning  absinthe  had  been 
sufficient  to  cover  the  modest  expense  of 
Pierette's  keeping,  but  how  many  other  re- 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  25 

forms  were  needed  to  provide  for  the  unfore- 
seen expenses  of  his  bachelor  establishment ! 
Full  of  gratitude,  the  little  girl  wished  to 
prove  it  by  her  zeal.  Already  the  aspect  of 
his  room  was  changed.  The  furniture  was 
dusted  and  arranged,  the  fireplace  cleaned, 
the  floor  polished,  and  spiders  no  longer 
spun  their  webs  over  the  deaths  of  Poniatow- 
ski  in  the  corner.  When  the  Captain  came 
home  the  inviting  odor  of  cabbage-soup  sa- 
luted him  on  the  staircase,  and  the  sight  of 
the  smoking  plates  on  the  coarse  but  white 
table-cloth,  with  a  bunch  of  flowers  and  pol- 
ished table-ware,  was  quite  enough  to  give 
him  a  good  appetite.  Pierette  profited  by 
the  good -humor  of  her  master  to  confess 
some  of  her  secret  ambitions.  She  wanted 
andirons  for  the  fireplace,  where  there  was 
now  always  a  fire  burning,  and  a  mould  for 
the  little  cakes  that  she  knew  how  to  make 
so  well.  And  the  Captain,  smiling  at  the 
child's  requests,  but  charmed  with  the  home- 


26        TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

like  atmosphere  of  his 
room,  promised  to 
think  of  it,  and  on  the 
morrow  replaced  his 
Londres  by  cigars  for 
a  sou  each,  hesitated 
to  offer  five  points  at 
ecarte,  and  refused  his 
third  glass  of  beer  or  his  second  glass  of 
chartreuse. 

Certainly  the  struggle  was  long ;  it  was 
cruel.  Often,  when  the  hour  came  for  the 
glass  that  was  denied  him  by  economy,  when 
thirst  seized  him  by  the  throat,  the  Captain 
was  forced  to  make  an  heroic  effort  to  with- 
draw his  hand  already  reaching  out  towards 
the  swan's  beak  of  the  cafe  ;  many  times  he 
wandered  about,  dreaming  of  the  king  turned 
up  and  of  quint  and  quatorze.  But  he  al- 
most always  courageously  returned  home ; 
and  as  he  loved  Pierette  more  through  ev- 
ery sacrifice  that  he  made  for  her,  he  em- 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES.  27 

braced  her  more  fondly  every  day.  For  he 
did  embrace  her.  She  was  no  longer  his 
servant.  When  once  she  stood  before  him 
at  the  table,  calling  him  "  Monsieur,"  and 
so  respectful  in  her  bearing,  he  could  not 
stand  it,  but  seizing  her  by  her  two  hands, 
he  said  to  her,  eagerly : 

"  First  embrace  me,  and  then  sit  down 
and  do  me  the  pleasure  of  speaking  famil- 
iarly, confound  it !" 

And  so  to-day  it  is  accomplished.  Meet- 
ing a  child  has  saved  that  man  from  an 
ignominious  age. 

He  has  substituted  for  his  old  vices  a 
young  passion.  He  adores  the  little  lame 
girl  who  skips  around  him  in  his  room, 
which  is  comfortable  and  well  furnished. 

He  has  already  taught  Pierette  to  read, 
and,  moreover,  recalling  his  caligraphy  as  a 
sergeant-major,  he  has  set  her  copies  in  writ- 
ing. It  is  his  greatest  joy  when  the  child, 
bending  attentively  over  her  paper,  and  some- 


28    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

times  making  a  blot  which  she  quickly  licks 
up  with  her  tongue,  has  succeeded  in  copy- 
ing all  the  letters  of  an  interminable  adverb 
in  ment.  His  uneasiness  is  in  thinking  that 
he  is  growing  old  and  has  nothing  to  leave 
his  adopted  child. 

And  so  he  becomes  almost  a  miser;  he 
theorizes ;  he  wishes  to  give  up  his  tobacco, 
although  Pierette  herself  fills  and  lights  his 
pipe  for  him.  He  counts  on  saving  from 
his  slender  income  enough  to  purchase  a 
little  stock  of  fancy  goods.  Then  when  he 
is  dead  she  can  live  an  obscure  and  tranquil 
life,  hanging  up  somewhere  in  the  back 
room  of  the  small  shop  an  old  cross  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor,  her  souvenir  of  the  Cap- 
tain. 

Every  day  he  goes  to  walk  with  her  on 
the  rampart.  Sometimes  they  are  passed  by 
folks  who  are  strangers  in  the  village,  who 
look  with  compassionate  surprise  at  the  old 
soldier,  spared  from  the  wars,  and  the  poor 


THE  CAPTAIN'S  VICES. 


29 


lame  child.  And  he  is  moved — oh,  so  pleas- 
antly, almost  to  tears  —  when  one  of  the 
passers-by  whispers,  as  they  pass : 

"  Poor  father !     Yet  how  pretty  his  daugh- 


ter is. 

3 


TWO    CLOWNS. 


PL-OWN) 

SB    • "««  ~ 


THE  night  was  clear  and 
glittering  with  stars,  and  there 
was  a  crowd  upon  the  market-place.  They 
crowded  in  gaping  delight  around  the  tent 
of  some  strolling  acrobats,  where  red  and 
smoking  lanterns  lighted  the  performance 
which  was  just  beginning.  Rolling  their 
muscular  limbs  in  dirty  wraps,  and  decorat- 
ed from  head  to  foot  with  tawdry  ruffles  of 
fur,  the  athletes — four  boyish  ruffians  with 
vulgar  heads — were  ranged  in  line  before 
the  painted  canvas  which  represented  their 
exploits ;  they  stood  there  with  their  heads 
down,  their  legs  apart,  and  their  muscular 


34        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

arms  crossed  upon  their  chests.  Near  them 
the  marshal  of  the  establishment,  an  old 
sub-officer,  with  the  drooping  mustache  of 
a  brandy-drinker,  belted  in  at  the  waist,  a 
heart  of  red  cloth  on  his  leather  breastplate, 
leaned  on  a  pair  of  foils.  The  feminine 
attraction,  a  rose  in  her  hair,  with  a  man's 
overcoat  protecting  her  against  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  evening  air  over  her  ballet- 
dancer's  dress,  played  at  the  same  time  the 
cymbals  and  the  big  bass-drum  a  desperate 
accompaniment  to  three  measures  of  a  polka, 
always  the  same,  which  were  murdered  by  a 
blind  clarionet  player;  and  the  ringmaster, 
a  sort  of  Hercules  with  the  face  of  a  gal- 
ley-slave, a  Silenus  in  scarlet  drawers,  roar- 
ed out  his  furious  appeal  in  a  loud  voice. 
Mixed  with  the  crowd  of  loafers,  soldiers, 
and  women,  I  regarded  the  abject  spectacle 
with  disgust — the  last  vestige  of  the  Olympic 
games. 

Suddenly  the  music  ceased,  and  the  crowd 


TWO   CLOWNS. 


35 


broke  into  roars  of  laughter.   The  clown  had 
just  made  his  appearance. 

He  wore  the  ordinary  costume  of  his  kind, 
the  short  vest  and  many-colored  stockings 
of  the  peasants  of  the  opera  comique,  the 
three    horns   turned 
backward,  the  red  wig 
with    its    turned -up 
queue  and  its  butter- 
fly on  the  end.     He 


was  a  young  man,  but 
alas,  his  face,  whit- 
ened with  flour,  was 
already  seamed  with 

vice.  Planting  himself  before  the  public, 
and  opening  his  mouth  in  a  silly  grin,  he 
showed  bleeding  gums  almost  devoid  of 
teeth.  The  ringmaster  kicked  him  violent- 
ly from  behind. 

"  Come  in,"  he  said,  tranquilly. 

Then  the  traditional  dialogue,  punctuated 
by  slaps  in  the  face,  began   between  the 


36    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

mountebank  and  his  clown,  and  the  entire 
audience  applauded  these  souvenirs  of  the 
classic  farce,  fallen  from  the  theatre  to  the 
stage  of  the  mountebank,  and  whose  humor, 
coarse  but  pungent,  seemed  a  drunken  echo 
of  the  laughter  of  Moliere.  The  clown  ex- 
erted his  low  talent,  throwing  out  at  each 
moment  some  low  jest,  some  immodest  pun, 
to  which  his  master,  simulating  a  prudish 
indignation,  responded  by  thumps  on  the 
head.  But  the  adroit  clown  excelled  in  the 
art  of  receiving  affronts.  He  knew  to  per- 
fection how  to  bend  his  body  like  a  bow 
under  the  impulse  of  a  kick,  and  having  re- 
ceived on  one  cheek  a  full-armed  blow,  he 
stuffed  his  tongue  at  once  in  that  cheek 
and  began  to  whine  until  a  new  blow  passed 
the  artificial  swelling  into  the  other  cheek. 
Blows  showered  on  him  as  thick  as  hail,  and, 
disappearing  under  a  shower  of  slaps,  the 
flour  on  his  face  and  the  red  powder  of  his 
wig  enveloped  him  like  a  cloud.  At  last  he 


TWO   CLOWNS.  37 

exhausted  all  his  resources  of  low  scurrility, 
ridiculous  contortions,  grotesque  grimaces, 
pretended  aches,  falls  at  full  length,  etc.,  till 
the  ringmaster,  judging  this  gratuitous  show 
long  enough,  and  that  the  public  were  suffi- 
ciently fascinated,  sent  him  off  with  a  final 
cuff. 

Then  the  music  began  again  with  such 
violence  that  the  painted  canvas  trembled. 
The  clown,  having  seized  the  sticks  of  a 
drum  fixed  on  one  of  the  beams  of  the  scaf- 
folding, mingled  a  triumphant  rataplan  with 
the  bombardment  of  the  bass -drum,  the 
cracked  thunder  of  the  cymbals,  and  the 
distracted  wail  of  the  clarionet.  The  ring- 
master, roaring  again  with  his  heavy  voice, 
announced  that  the  show  was  about  to  be- 
gin, and,  as  a  sign  of  defiance,  he  threw  two 
or  three  old  fencing -gloves  among  his  fel- 
low-wrestlers. The  crowd  rushed  into  the 
tent,  and  soon  only  a  small  group  of  loungers 
remained  in  front  of  the  deserted  stage. 


38        TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

I  was  just  going  off,  when  I  noticed  by 
my  side  an  old  woman  who  looked  with 
strange  persistence  at  the  empty  stage  where 
the  red  lights  were  still  burning.  She  wore 
the  linen  bonnet  and  the  crossed  fichu  of 
the  poorer  class  of  women,  and  her  whole 
appearance  was  that  of  neatness  and  hon- 
esty. Asking  myself  what  powerful  interest 
could  hold  her  in  such  a  place,  I  looked  at 
her  with  more  attention,  and  I  saw  that  her 
eyes  were  full  of  tears,  and  that  her  hands, 
which  she  had  crossed  over  her  breast,  were 
trembling  with  emotion. 

"  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ?"  I  said, 
coming  near  to  her,  impelled  by  an  instinc- 
tive sympathy. 

"The  matter,  good  sir?"  cried  the  old 
woman,  bursting  into  tears.  "Passing  by 
this  market-place — oh,  quite  by  chance,  I 
tell  you  (I  have  no  heart  for  pleasure) — pass- 
ing before  that  dreadful  tent,  I  have  just 
seen  in  the  wretch  who  has  received  all  those 


TWO   CLOWNS.  39 

blows  my  only  son,  sir,  my  sole  child  !  It  is 
the  grief  of  my  life,  do  you  see  ?  I  never 
knew  what  had  become  of  him  since — oh, 
since  my  poor  husband  sent  him  away  to 
sea  as  a  cabin-boy.  He  was  apprenticed  to 
an  ironmonger,  sir.  He  robbed  his  master 
— he,  the  son  of  two  honest  people.  As  for 
me,  I  would  have  pardoned  him.  You  know 
what  mothers  are.  But  my  man,  when  they 
came  and  told  him  that  his  son  had  stolen, 
he  was  like  a  madman.  It  was  that  that 
killed  him,  I  am  sure.  I  have  never  seen 
the  unhappy  child  again.  For  five  years  I 
have  heard  nothing  from  him.  I  sought  to 
deceive  myself.  I  said  experience  will  re- 
form him,  and  there — there — just  now — " 

And  the  poor  old  woman  sobbed  in  a  pit- 
iful way.  A  crowd  had  formed.  It  was  no 
longer  to  me  that  she  spoke ;  it  was  not  to 
the  crowd  ;  it  was  to  herself,  to  the  bitter- 
ness of  her  own  heart. 

"  He,  my  Adrien,  the  child  that  I  nourish- 


40   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

ed  at  my  own  breast,  a  mountebank  in  a 
travelling  theatre !  struck  and  insulted  be- 
fore the  whole  world  !  He,  whom  I  saved 
at  four  when  he  was  so  ill,  a  clown  in  a  tent ! 
He,  the  beautiful  baby  of  whom  I  was  so 
proud,  whom  I  made  the  neighbors  admire 
when  he  was  so  small  that  he  rolled  naked 
on  my  knee,  holding  his  little  foot  in  his 
hand  !" 

Suddenly  at  this  point  in  her  heart-break- 
ing monologue  the  old  woman  perceived  the 
crowd  listening  to  her.  She  looked  on  the 
spectators  in  astonishment,  as  one  who  starts 
from  sleep.  She  recognized  me  who  had 
questioned  her,  and  became  frightfully  pale. 

"  What  have  I  said  ?"  she  stammered. 
"  Let  me  pass."  And  brusquely  putting  us 
aside  with  an  imperious  gesture,  she  went 
off  with  a  rapid  step,  and  disappeared  in  the 
night. 

The  adventure  made  a  lively  impression 
on  me.  I  thought  often  of  it,  and  after  that, 


TWO   CLOWNS.  41 

when  I  saw  before  my  eyes  some  wretched 
and  degraded  creature,  some  woman  of  the 
street,  trailing  her  light  silk  skirts  in  the  flare 
of  a  gas-jet,  some  drunken  idler  leaning  on 
the  bar  of  a  cafe  and  bending  his  bloated 
face  over  his  glass  of  absinthe,  I  have 
thought,  "  Is  it  possible  that  that  being  can 
ever  have  been  a  little  child  ?" 

Now,  some  little  time  after  that  rencontre 
— let  us  be  careful  not  to  indicate  the  date 
— I  was  taken  into  a  gallery  of  the  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies  to  be  present  at  a  sensational 
sitting.  The  law  that  they  were  discussing 
on  that  day  is  of  no  importance,  but  it  was 
the  old  and  tedious  story  :  a  Ministerial  can- 
didate, formerly  in  the  Opposition,  proposed 
to  strike  a  blow  at  some  liberty  —  I  don't 
know  what — which  he  had  formerly  demand- 
ed with  virulence  and  force.  And,  more 
than  that,  the  man  in  power  was  going  to 
forfeit  his  word  to  the  tribune.  In  good 
French  that  is  called  "  to  betray,"  but  in 


42    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

parliamentary  language  they  employ  the 
phrase,  "accomplish  a  change  of  base." 
Opinion  was  divided,  the  majority  uncertain  ; 
and  upon  his  speech  would  depend  the  po- 
litical future  of  the  speaker.  Therefore,  on 
that  day,  the  legislators  were  in  their  places, 
and  the  Chamber  did  not  resemble,  as  usual, 
a  class  of  noisy  boys  presided  over  by  a 
master  without  authority.  The  lunch-coun- 
ter was  deserted,  and  the  deputies  of  the 
Centre  themselves  were  not  absorbed  in  their 
personal  correspondence. 

The  orator  mounted  the  tribune.  He  had 
the  commonplace  figure  of  a  verbose  orator  : 
bold  eye,  protruding  lips,  as  enlarged  by  the 
abuse  of  words.  He  began  by  fingering  his 
notes  with  an  important  air,  tasting  the  glass 
of  sweetened  water,  and  settling  himself  in 
his  place ;  then  he  started  a  babble  of  words 
without  sense,  with  the  nauseous  facility  of 
the  bar ;  misusing  vague  ideas,  abstract 
terms,  and  words  in  ly  and  ion,  stereotyped 


TWO   CLOWNS.  43 

words,  and  ready-made  phrases.  A  flattering 
murmur  greeted  the  end  of  his  exordium ; 
for  the  French  people  in  general,  and  the 
political  world  in  particular,  manifest  a  de- 
praved taste  for  that  sort  of  eloquence.  En- 
couraged, the  fine  speaker  entered  the  heart 
of  his  subject,  and  cynically  sang  his  recan- 
tation. He  abjured  none  of  his  opinions,  he 
repudiated  none  of  his  ^cts ;  he  would  al- 
ways remain  liberal  (a  blow  on  his  chest), 
but  that  which  was  good  yesterday  might 
be  dangerous  to-day;  truth  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Alps,  error  on  this  side.  The 
forbearance  of  the  Government  was  abused. 
And  he  threatened  the  assembly;  became 
prophet;  let  loose  the  dogs  of  war.  He 
even  risked  a  bit  of  poetry,  flourished  old 
metaphors,  which  were  worn  out  in  the  time 
of  Cicero,  and  compared  by  turn,  in  the 
same  phrase,  his  political  career  to  a  pilot,  a 
steed,  and  a  torch.  So  much  poetry  could 
only  accentuate  his  success.  There  was  a 


44      TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

salvo  of  bravos,  and  the  Opposition  grum- 
bled, foreseeing  their  defeat.  Violent  inter- 
ruptions broke  forth  :  furious  voices  recalled 
the  orator's  past  life,  and  threw  as  insults  his 
former  professions  in  his  face.  He  was  un- 
moved, and  stood  with  a  disdainful  air,  which 
was  very  effective. 
Then  the  bravos  re- 
doubled, and  he 
smiled  vaguely,  think- 
ing, no  doubt,  of  the 
proof-sheets  of  the 
Officiel,  where  he 
could  by-and-by  in- 
sert in  the  margin, 
without  too  much  ex- 
aggeration, "profound  sensation"  and  "pro- 
longed applause."  Then,  when  quiet  was 
re-established,  sure  of  his  success,  he  affect- 
ed a  serene  majesty.  He  took  up  again  his 
discourse,  soaring  like  a  goose,  launching 
out  with  high  doctrine,  citing  Royer-Collard. 


TWO   CLOWNS.  45 

But  I  heard  no  more.  The  scandalous 
spectacle  of  that  political  mountebank,  who 
sacrificed  eternal  principles  to  the  interests 
of  the  day,  recalled  to  my  memory  the  tent 
of  the  acrobats.  The  cold  rhetoric  of  that 
harangue,  vibrating  with  neither  truth  nor 
emotion,  recalled  to  me  the  patter,  learned 
by  heart,  of  the  powdered  clown  on  the 
stage.  The  superb  air  which  the  orator  as- 
sumed under  the  rain  of  reproaches  and  in- 
sults singularly  resembled  the  indifference 
of  the  clown  to  the  loud  slaps  on  his  face. 
Those  sonorous  phrases,  whose  echoes  had 
just  died  away,  sounded  as  false  as  a  stroll- 
ing band.  The  word  "  liberty  "  rolled  like 
the  bass-drum,  "public  interests"  and  "wel- 
fare of  the  State  "  clanged  discordantly  like 
the.  cymbals,  and  when  the  comedian  spoke 
of  his  "patriotism"  I  almost  heard  the  couac 
of  a  clarionet. 

A  long  uproar  woke  me  from  my  rev- 
ery.  The  speech  was  finished,  and  the 


46        TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQO1S    COPPEE. 

orator,  having  descended  from  the  rostrum, 
was  receiving  congratulations.  They  were 
about  to  vote  :  the  urns  were  being  pass- 
ed around,  but  the  result  was  certain,  and 
the  crowd  of  tribunes  was  already  dispers- 
ing. 

As  I  went  across  the  vestibule  I  saw  an 
elderly  lady  dressed  in  black.  She  was 
dressed  like  a  wealthy  bourgeoise  and  ap- 
peared radiant.  I  stopped  one  of  the  well- 
groomed  little  chaps  whom  one  sees  trot- 
ting around  in  the  Ministerial  corridors.  I 
knew  him  slightly,  and  I  asked  him  who 
that  lady  was. 

"  The  mother  of  the  orator,"  he  replied, 
with  official  emotion.  "  She  must  be  very 
proud." 

Very  proud  !  The  old  mother  who  wept 
so  bitterly  in  the  market-place  was  not  that ; 
and  if  the  mother  of  his  future  Excellency 
had  reflected,  she  would  have  regretted — she 
too — the  time  when  her  boy  was  very  small, 


TWO   CLOWNS. 


47 


and  rolled  naked  on  her  knee,  holding  his 
little  foot  in  his  hand. 

But,    bah !    everything   is   relative,   even 
shame. 


A   VOLUNTARY    DEATH. 


I  KNEW  the  poet  Louis  Miraz  very  well, 
in  the  old  times  in  the  Latin  Quarter,  where 
we  used  to  take  our  meals  together  at  a 
cremerie  on  the  Rue  de  Seine,  kept  by  an 
old  Polish  woman  whom  we  nicknamed  the 
Princess  Chocolawska,  on  account  of  the 
enormous  bowl  of  cre'me  and  chocolate 
which  she  exposed  daily  in  the  show-window 
of  her  shop.  It  was  possible  to  dine  there 
for  ten  sous,  with  "two  breads,"  an  "ordi- 
naire for  thirty  centimes,"  and  a  "small 
coffee." 


52    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOI3  COPPEE. 

Some  who  were  very  nice  spent  a  sou 
more  for  a  napkin. 

Besides  some  young  men  who  were  des- 
tined to  become  geniuses,  the  ordinary 
guests  of  the  cremerie  were  some  poor  com- 
patriots of  the  proprietress,  who  had  all  to 
some  exte-nt  commanded  armies.  There 
was,  above  all,  an  imposing  and  melancholy 
old  fellow  with  a  white  beard,  whose  old 
befrogged  cloak,  shabby  boots,  and  old  hat, 
which  looked  as  if  snails  had  crawled  over 
it,  presented  a  poem  of  misery,  and  whom 
the  other  Poles  treated  with  a  marked  re- 
spect, for  he  had  been  a  dictator  for  three 
days. 

It  was,  moreover,  at  the  Princess  Choco- 
lawska's  that  I  knew  a  singular  fool,  who 
gained  his  bread  by  giving  German  lessons, 
and  declared  himself,  a  convert  to  Buddhism. 
On  the  mantle  of  the  miserable  room,  where 
he  lived  with  a  milliner  of  Saint-Germain, 
was  enthroned  an  ugly  little  Buddha  in  jade, 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  53 

fixing  his  hypnotized  eyes  on  his  navel,  and 
holding  his  great  toes  in  his  hands.  The 
German  professor  accorded  to  the  idol  the 
most  profound  veneration,  but  on  the  epoch 
of  quarter-day  he  was  sometimes  forced  to 
carry  him  to  the  Mont-de-piete,  upon  which 
he  fell  into  a  state  of  sombre  chagrin,  and 
did  not  recover  his  serenity  until  he  was 
able  to  make  amends  for  his  impious  act. 
He  never  failed,  moreover,  to  renew  his 
avowals  in  prosperous  times,  and  finally  to 
take  his  god  out  of  pawn. 

As  to  Louis  Miraz,  he  had  the  deep  eyes, 
the  pale  complexion,  and  the  long  and  di- 
shevelled hair  of  all  those  young  men  who 
come  to  town  in  third-class  carriages  to 
conquer  glory,  who  spend  more  for  midnight 
oil  than  for  beefsteaks,  and  who,  rich  already 
with  some  manuscripts,  have  thrown  out  to 
great  Paris  from  the  height  of  some  hill  in 
its  environs  the  classic  defiance  of  Rastig- 
nac.  At  that  time  my  hair  was  archaic 


54        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

enough  in  length  to  grease  the  collar  of  my 
coat.  Thus  we  were  made  to  understand 
each  other,  and  Louis  Miraz  soon  took  me 
to  his  attic -room  in  the  Rue  des  Quatre- 


Vents,  where  he  dragged  two  thousand  alex- 
andrines over  me. 

Seriously,  they  were  fresh  and  charming 
verses,  with  the  inspiration  of  spring -tide, 
having  the  perfume  of  the  first  lilacs,  and 
Forest  Birds  (the  title  of  that  collection  of 
poems  which  Louis  Miraz  published  a  little 


A   VOLUNTARY    DEATH.  55 

while  after  he  read  them  to  me)  will  retain 
a  place  among  the  volumes  in  the  first  rank 
of  belles-lettres,  by  the  side  of  those  poets  of 
a  single  book — of  the  Daudet  of  the  Amou- 
reuses,  for  example. 

For  Miraz  wrote  no  more  verse.  A  young 
eaglet  seeking  the  upper  air,  he  made  his 
eyrie  on  the  summit  of  Montmartre,  and  for 
quite  a  while  we  lost  sight  of  him.  Then  I 
found  his  name  again  in  Sunday  journals 
and  reviews,  when  he  began  to  write  those 
short  and  exquisite  sketches  which  have 
made  his  reputation.  Thus  five  years  pass- 
ed, when  I  met  him  one  day  in  the  editor's 

office  of  a  journal  for  which  I  worked. 

* 

*  * 

Each  of  us  was  as  much  pleased  as  the 
other  at  thus  meeting  again ;  and  after  the 
first  "  What,  is  that  you  ?  Is  that  you  ?"  we 
stood  facing  each  other,  shaking  hands,  and 
exposing,  in  a  laugh  of  cordial  delight,  our 
teeth,  which  in  old  times  we  used  to  exercise 


5©   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

on  the  same  crust  of  poverty.  He  had  not 
changed.  He  had  not  even  sacrificed  his 
long  hair,  which  he  threw  back  with  the 
graceful  movement  of  a  horse  who  tosses 
his  mane.  Only  he  had  the  clear  complex- 
ion and  calm  eye  of  a  contented  man,  and 
his  slim  figure  was  clad  in  most  fashionable 
costume. 

"  We  won't  drift  apart  again,  will  we  ?" 
said  he,  affectionately,  taking  me  by  the  arm  ; 
and  he  led  me  out  in  the  boulevard,  where 
the  April  sun  gilded  the  young  leaves  of  the 
plane-trees. 

Ah,  happy  day !  How  we  exhausted  the 
"  Don't  you  remembers  ?"  "  Do  you  remem- 
ber the  fried  eggs  which  tasted  of  straw,  and 
the  dreadful  rice-milk  of  the  Princess  Cho- 
colawska?  and  the  melancholy  air  of  the 
old  dictator  ?  and  the  German  who  used  to 
pawn  his  god  every  three  months  ?"  At  last 
those  days  of  hardship  were  finished.  He 
had  from  afar  applauded  my  success,  as  I 


A   VOLUNTARY    DEATH.  57 

had  watched  his.  But  one  thing  I  did  not 
know,  and  that  was  that  he  had  married  a 
woman  whom  he  adored,  and  that  he  had  a 
charming  little  girl. 

"  Come  and  see  them ;  you  shall  dine 
with  me." 

I  let  myself  be  persuaded,  and  he  carried 
me  down  to  the  Enclos  des  Ternes,  where 
he  lived  in  a  cottage  among  the  trees. 
There  everything  made  you  welcome.  No 
sooner  had  we  opened  the  door  of  the  gar- 
den than  a  young  dog  frisked  about  our 
feet. 

"  Down,  Gavroche !  He  will  soil  your 
clothes." 

But  at  the  sound  of  the  bell  Madame 
Miraz  appeared  at  the  steps  with  her  little 
daughter  in  her  arms.  An  imposing  and 
beautiful  blond,  her  well  -  moulded  figure 
wrapped  in  a  blue  gown. 

"  Put  on  a  plate  more.  I've  an  old  com- 
rade with  me." 


58    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

And  the  happy  father,  keeping  his  hat  on 
his  head  and  carrying  his  little  girl,  showed 
me  all  over  his  establishment — the  dining- 
room,  brightened  by  light  bits  of  faience , 
the  study,  abounding  in  books,  with  its  win- 
dow opening  out  on  the  green  turf,  so  that  a 
puff  of  wind  had  strewn  with  rose-leaves  the 
printer's  proofs  which  were  scattered  on  the 
table. 

"  This  is  only  a  beginning,  you  know.  It 
wasn't  so  long  ago  that  we  were  working 
for  three  sous  a  line." 

And  while  I  luxuriated  under  a  blossom- 
ing Judas-tree  which  I  saw  in  the  garden, 
Miraz,  at  ease  in  his  home,  had  slipped  into 
his  working- vest,  put  on  his  slippers,  and, 
lying  on  his  sofa,  caught  little  Helen  in 
his  arms  to  toss  her  in  the  air — "  Houp 
la!  Houp  la!" 

I  do  not  remember  ever  to  have  had  a 
more  perfect  impression  of  contentment. 
We  dined  pleasantly  —  two  good  courses, 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  «J9 

that  was  all ;  a  dinner  without  pretence, 
where  we  served  ourselves  with  the  pepper- 
mill.  The  charming  Madame  Miraz  pre- 
sided with  her  bright  smile,  having  her  child 
by  her  side  in  a  high-chair.  She  spoke  but 
little,  but  her  sweet  and  intelligent  atten- 
tion followed  our  light  and  paradoxical  chat, 
the  good-humored  fooling  of  men  of  letters  ; 
and  at  the  dessert  she  took  a  rose  from  the 
bouquet  which  ornamented  the  table,  and 
placed  it  in  her  hair  near  her  ear  with  a  su- 
preme grace.  She  was  indeed  that  lovely 
and  silent  friend  whom  a  dreamer  requires. 

We  took  our  coffee  in  the  study — they  in- 
tended to  furnish  the  salon  very  soon  with 
the  price  of  a  story  to  be  published  by  Levy 
— then,  as  the  evening  was  cool,  a  fire  of 
sticks  and  twigs  was  built,  and  while  we 
smoked,  Miraz  and  I,  recalling  old  memories, 
the  mistress  of  the  house,  holding  on  her 
knees  little  Helen,  now  ready  for  bed,  made 
her  repeat  "  Our  Father  "  and  "  Hail  Mary," 


60   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

which  the  little  one  lisped,  rubbing  her  lit- 
tle feet  together  before  the  warm  flame. 


* 
*  * 


We  saw  each  other  again,  often  at  first, 
then  less  frequently,  the  difficult  and  com- 
plicated life  of  literary  labor  taking  us  each 
his  own  way.  So  the  years  passed.  We 
met,  shook  hands.  "  Everything  going  well?" 
"Splendidly."  And  that  was  all.  Then, 
later,  I  found  the  name  of  Louis  Miraz  but 
rarely  in  the  journals  and  periodicals.  "  Hap- 
py man  ;  he  is  resting,"  I  said  to  myself,  re- 
membering that  he  was  spoken  of  as  having 
made  a  small  fortune.  Finally,  last  autumn, 
I  learned  that  he  was  seriously  ill. 

I  hurried  to  see  him.  He  still  lived  at 
the  Enclos  des  Ternes  ;  but  on  this  sombre 
day  of  the  last  of  November  the  little  house 
seemed  cold,  and  looked  naked  among  the 
leafless  trees.  It  seemed  to  me  shrunken 
and  diminished,  like  everything  that  we  have 
not  seen  for  a  long  time. 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  6 1 

The  dog  was  probably  dead,  for  his  bark 
no  longer  answered  the  sound  of  the  bell 
when  I  passed  the  little  gate  and  entered 
the  garden,  all  strewn  with  dead  leaves  where 
the  night's  frost  had  withered  the  last  chrys- 
anthemums. 

It  was  not  Madame  Miraz — she  was  ab- 
sent— it  was  Helen  who  received  me,  Helen, 
who  had  grown  to  be  a  great  girl  of  four- 
teen, with  an  awkward  manner.  She  opened 
for  me  the  door  of  her  father's  study, 
and  brusquely  lifting  her  great  black  eye- 
lashes, turned  on  me  a  timid  and  distressed 
glance. 

I  found  Miraz  huddled  in  an  easy-chair 
in  the  corner  of  the  fireplace,  wrapped  in  a 
sort  of  bed-gown,  with  gray  locks  streaking 
his  long  hair ;  and  by  the  cold,  clammy  hand 
which  he  reached  towards  me,  by  the  pallid 
face  which  he  turned  upon  me,  I  knew  that 
he  was  lost.  Horrible !  I  found  in  my  un- 
happy comrade  that  worn  and  rained  look 


which  used  to  strike  us  formerly  among  the 
poor  Poles  of  the  crdmerie. 

"  Ah,  well,  old  man,  things  are  not  going 
well  ?" 

"  Deucedly  bad,  my  boy,"  he  answered, 
with  a  heart-breaking  smile.  "  I  am  going 
out  stupidly  with  consumption,  as  they  do 
in  the  fifth  act,  you  know,  when  the  venera- 
ble doctor,  with  a  head  like  Be'ranger,  feels 
the  first  walking  gentleman's  pulse,  and  lifts 
his  eyes  towards  heaven,  saying,  'The  death- 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  63 

struggle  approaches  !'  Only  the  difference 
is  that  with  me  it  continues  ;  it  will  not  con- 
clude, the  death-struggle.  Smoke  away; 
that  doesn't  disturb  me,"  he  added,  seeing 
me  put  my  cigar  one  side,  his  cough  sound- 
ing like  a  death-rattle. 

I  tried  to  find  encouraging  words.  I  talk- 
ed with  him,  holding  -him  by  the  hand  and 
patting  him  affectionately  on  the  shoulder; 
but  my  voice  had  in  my  own  ears  the  empty 
hollowness  of  deceit,  and  Miraz,  looking  at 
me,  seemed  to  pity  my  efforts. 

I  was  silent. 

"  Look,"  said  he,  pointing  to  his  table  ; 
"see  my  work -bench.  For  six  months  I 
have  not  been  able  to  write." 

It  was  true.  Nothing  could  be  more  sad 
than  that  heap  of  papers  covered  with  dust, 
and  in  an  old  Roman  plate  there  was  a  bun- 
dle of  pens,  crusted  with  ink,  and  like  those 
trophies  of  rusty  foils  which  hang  on  the 
walls  of  old  fencers. 


64        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

I  made  a  new  attempt  to  revive  him.  Die ! 
at  his  age.  Nonsense !  He  wasn't  taking 
care  of  himself.  He  must  pass  the  winter 
in  the  South,  drink  a  good  draught  of  sun- 
light. He  could.  He  was  easy  in  his  mon- 
ey matters. 

But  he  stopped  me,  putting  his  hand  on 
my  arm. 

"Listen,"  he  said,  gravely,  "  we  have  seen 
each  other  seldom,  but  you  are  my  oldest, 
perhaps  my  best,  friend.  You  have  proved 
me  pen  in  hand.  Well,  I  am  going  to  tell 
you  something  in  confidence,  for  you  to  keep 
to  yourself,  unless  it  may  serve  on  some  oc- 
casion to  discourage  the  young  literary  as- 
pirants who  bring  their  manuscripts  to  you — 
always  a  praiseworthy  action.  Yes,  I  have 
been  successful.  Yes,  I  have  been  paid  a 
franc  a  line.  Yes,  I  have  made  money,  and 
there  in  that  drawer  are  a  certain  num- 
ber of  yellow,  green,  and  red  papers  from 
which  a  bit  is  clipped  every  six  months, 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  65 

and  which  represent  three  or  four  thousand 
francs  of  income.  It  is  rare  in  our  profes- 
sion, and  to  gain  that  poor  hoard  I  have 
been  obliged — I,  a  poet — to  imitate  the  un- 
sociable virtues  of  a  bourgeois,  know  how  to 
deny  a  jewel  to  my  wife,  a  dress  to  my  daugh- 
ter. At  last  I  have  that  money.  And  I 
often  said  to  myself,  if  I  should  die  their 
bread  is  assured,  and  here  is  a  little  mar- 
riage portion  for  Helen !  And  I  was  con- 
tent— I  was  proud ! — for  I  know  them,  the 
stories  of  our  widows  and  our  orphans,  the 
fourpenny  help  of  the  government,  the  to- 
bacco shops  for  six  hundred  francs  in  the 
province,  and,  if  the  daughter  is  intelligent 
and  pretty  like  mine,  the  dramatic  author, 
an  old  friend  of  the  father,  who  advises  her 
to  enter  the  Conservatoire,  and  who  makes 
of  her — mercy  of  God !  that  shall  never  be. 
But  for  all  that,  my  boy,  it  is  necessary  that 
I  should  not  linger.  Sickness  is  expensive, 
and  already  it  has  been  necessary  to  sell 


66        TEN   TALES   BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

one  or  two  bonds  from  that  drawer.  To 
seek  the  sunlight,  as  you  suggest,  to  bask 
like  a  lizard  at  Cannes  or  at  Menton,  one 
more  bond  must  go,  and  there  would  not  be 
enough  to  last  to  the  end,  if  I  should  wait 
for  seven  or  eight  years  more,  now  that  I 
can  no  longer  write.  Happily,  there  is  noth- 
ing to  fear.  But  what  I  have  suffered  since 
I  have  been  incapable  of  writing,  and  have 
felt  my  hoard  of  gold  shrink  and  diminish 
in  my  hand  like  the  Magic  Skin  of  Balzac,  is 
frightful.  Now  you  understand  me,  do  you 
not  ?  and  you  will  no  longer  bid  me  take 
care  of  myself.  No ;  if  you  still  pray  to  God, 
ask  him  to  send  me  speedily  to  the  under- 
taker's." 

* 
#  # 

Fifteen  days  later  some  thirty  of  us  fol- 
lowed the  hearse  which  carried  Louis  Miraz 
to  the  Cemetery  Montmartre.  It  had  snow- 
ed the  day  before,  and  Doctor  Arnould,  the 
old  frequenter  of  painters'  studios,  the  friend 


A    VOLUNTARY   DEATH.  67 

and  physician  of  the  dead  man,  walking  be- 
hind me,  called  in  his  brusque  voice, 

"Very  commonplace,  but  always  terrible 
the  contrast :  a  burial  in  the  snow — black 
on  white.  The  Funeral  of  the  Poor,  by  the 
late  Vigneron,  isn't  to  be  ridiculed.  Brr !" 

At  last  we  came  to  the  edge  of  the  grave. 
The  place  and  the  time  were  sad.  Under  a 
cloudy  sky  the  little  yew-trees,  swayed  by  the 
wind,  threw  down  their  burdens  of  melted 
snow.  The  by-standers  had  formed  a  circle, 
and  were  watching  the  grave-diggers,  who 
were  lowering  the  coffin  by  cords.  Near  a 
cross-bearer,  whose  short  surplice  permitted 
the  bottom  of  his  trousers  to  be  seen,  the 
priest  waited  with  a  finger  in  his  book;  and, 
having  grasped  the  rim  of  his  hat  under  his 
left  arm,  the  orator  of  the  Society  of  Men  of 
Letters  already  held  in  his  black-gloved  hand 
the  funeral  oration,  hastily  patched  up  by  the 
aid  of  a  comrade  over  a  couple  of  glasses  at 
the  corner  of  a  cafe  table. 


68        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

Suddenly,  as  the  priest  began  his  Latin 
prayers,  Doctor  Arnould  seized  me  by  the 
arm  and  whispered  in  my  ear, 

"  You  know  that  he  killed  himself  ?" 

I  looked  at  him  with  astonishment.  But 
he  pointed  to  the  group  in  black,  composed 
of  Madame  Miraz  and  her  daughter,  who 
were  sobbing  under  their  long  veils  and 
clasping  each  other  in  a  tragic  embrace,  and 
he  added, 

"  For  them.  Yes,  for  six  months  he  threw 
all  his  medicines  in  the  fire,  and  designedly 
committed  all  sorts  of  imprudences.  He 
confessed  it  to  me  before  his  death.  I  had 
not  understood  it  at  all — I,  who  had  expect- 
ed to  prolong  his  life  at  least  three  years  by 
creosote.  At  last  the  other  night,  when  it 
was  freezing  cold,  he  left  his  window  open, 
as  if  by  forgetfulness,  and  was  taken  with 
bleeding  at  the  lungs.  Yes,  that  he  might 
leave  bread  for  those  two  women.  The 
cure  does  not  dream  that  he  is  blessing  a 


A   VOLUNTARY   DEATH. 


69 


suicide.  But  what  of  it,  my  good  fellow? 
Miraz  is  in  the  paradise  of  the  brave.  The 
details  of  such  a  death.  Eh  ?  It  is  tougher 
than  the  passage  of  the  Bridge  of  Arcole." 


A  DRAMATIC    FUNERAL. 


FOR  twenty-five  years  he  had  played  the 
role  of  the  villain  at  the  Boulevard  du  Crime,* 
and  his  harsh  voice,  his  nose  like  an  eagle's 
beak,  his  eye  with  its  savage  glitter,  had 
made  him  a  good  player  of  such  parts.  For 
twenty-five  years,  dressed  in  the  cloak  and 
encircled  by  the  fawn- colored  leather  belt 
of  Mordaunt,  he  had  retreated  with  the  step 
of  a  wounded  scorpion  before  the  sword  of 
D'Artagnan ;  draped  in  the  dirty  Jewish 
gown  of  Rodin,  he  had  rubbed  his  dry 

*  A  nickname  given  to  the  Boulevard  du  Temple, 
on  account  of  the  numerous  melodramatic  theatres 
situated  there. 


74   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANgOIS  COPPEE. 

hands  together,  muttering  the  terrible  "Pa- 
tience, patience !•"  and,  curled  on  the  chair 
of  the  Due  d'Este,  he  had  said  to  Lucretia 
Borgia,  with  a  sufficiently  infernal  glance, 
"Take  care  and  make  no 
mistake.  The  flagon  of  gold, 
madame."  When,  preceded 
by  a  tremolo,  he  made  his  en- 
try in  the  scene,  the  third 
gallery  trembled,  and  a  sigh 
of  relief  greeted  the  moment 
when  the  first  walking  gentleman  at  last 
said  to  him  :  "  Between  us  two,  now,"  and 
immolated  him  for  the  grand  triumph  of 
virtue. 

But  this  sort  of  success,  which  is  only  be- 
trayed by  murmurs  of  horror,  is  not  of  the 
kind  to  make  a  dramatic  career  seductive ; 
and  besides  the  old  actor  had  always  hidden 
in  a  corner  of  his  heart  the  bucolic  ideal 
which  is  in  the  heart  of  almost  all  artists. 
He  sighed  for  an  old  age  of  leisure,  and  the 


A   DRAMATIC    FUNERAL.  75 

comfortable  dignity  of  a  retired  shopkeeper; 
the  house  in  the  country,  where  he  could  live 
with  his  family,  with  melons,  under  an  arbor ; 
cakes  and  wine  in  the  winter  evenings ;  his 
daughter  a  scholar  in  a  convent ;  his  son  in 
the  uniform  of  the  Polytechnique ;  and  the 
cross  of  the  Legion. 

Now,  when  we  had  occasion  to  know  him, 
he  had  already  nearly  realized  his  dreams. 

After  the  failure  of  the  theatre  where  he 
had  been  for  a  long  time  engaged,  some 
capitalists  had  thought  of  him  to  put  the 
enterprise  on  its  feet  again.  With  his  system- 
atic habits,  his  good  sense,  his  thorough  and 
practical  knowledge  of  the  business,  and  a 
sufficiently  correct  literary  instinct,  he  be- 
came an  excellent  manager.  He  was  the 
owner  of  stocks  and  a  villa  at  Montmorency ; 
his  son  was  a  student  at  Sainte-Barbe,  and 
his  daughter  had  just  come  out  of  Les  Oi- 
seaux ;  and  if  the  malice  of  small  newspa- 
pers had  retarded  his  nomination  in  the 


76    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

Legion  of  Honor  by  recalling  every  year, 
about  the  first  of  January,  his  old  ranting 
on  the  stage,  when  he  played  formerly  the 
villains'  parts,  he  could  yet  hope  that  it  would 
not  be  long  before  the  red  ribbon  would 
flourish  in  his  button -hole.  He  had  still 
preserved  some  of  the  habits  of  a  strolling 
player,  such  as  being  very  familiar  with  ev- 
erybody, and  dyeing  his  mustaches ;  but  as 
he  was,  on  the  whole,  good,  honest,  and  serv- 
iceable, he  conquered  the  esteem  and  friend- 
ship of  those  with  whom  he  came  in  contact. 

So  it  was  with  sincere  grief  that  the  whole 
dramatic  world  learned  one  day  the  terrible 
sorrow  which  had  smitten  that  excellent 
man.  His  daughter,  a  girl  of  seventeen, 
had  died  suddenly  of  brain-fever. 

We  knew  how  he  adored  the  child ;  how 
he  had  brought  her  up  in  the  strictest  princi- 
ples of  family  and  religion,  far  from  the  thea- 
tre, something  as  Triboulet  hid  his  daughter 
Blanche  in  the  little  house  of  the  cul-de- 


A    DRAMATIC    FUNERAL. 


77 


sac  Bucy.  We  un- 
derstood that  all  the 
hopes  and  ambitions 
of  the  man  rested  on 
the  head  of  that 
charming  girl,  who, 
near  all  the  corrup- 
tion of  the  theatre, 
had  grown  up  in  inno- 
cence and  purity,  as 
one  sees  sometimes 
in  the  scanty  grass  of 
the  faubourgs  a  field- 
flower  spring  up  by 
the  door  of  a  hovel. 

We  were  among  the  first  at  the  funeral,  to 
which  we  had  been  summoned  by  a  black- 
bordered  billet. 

A  crowd  of  the  people  of  the  neighbor- 
hood encumbered  the  street  before  the  house 
of  the  dead,  attracted  by  the  pomps  of  the 
first-class  funeral  ordered  by  the  old  come- 


*jB      TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

dian,  who  had  preserved  the  taste  of  the  mise 
en  scene  even  in  his  grief.  The  magnificent 
hearse  and  cumbrous  mourning -coaches 
were  already  drawn  up  to  the  sidewalk,  and 
under  the  door,  and  in  the  shade  of  the 
heavy  fringed  and  silvered  draperies,  amid 
the  twinkling  of  burning  candles,  between 
two  priests  reading  prayers  in  their  Prayer- 
books,  the  form  of  the  massive  coffin  could 
be  seen  under  its  white  cloth,  covered  with 
Parma  violets. 

As  we  walked  among  the  crowd  we  noticed 
the  groups  formed  of  those  who,  like  us, 
were  waiting  the  departure  of  the  cortege. 
There  were  almost  all  the  actors,  men  and 
women,  of  Paris,  who  had  come  to  pay 
their  last  respects  to  the  daughter  of  their 
comrade.  Undoubtedly  nothing  could  be 
more  natural ;  but  we  experienced  not  the 
less  a  strange  sensation  on  seeing,  around 
the  coffin  of  that  pure  young  girl  who  had 
breathed  away  her  last  breath  in  a  prayer, 


A    DRAMATIC    FUNERAL. 


79 


the  gathering  of  all  those  faces  marked  by 
the  brand  of  the  theatre. 

They  were  all  there  :  the  stars,  the  come- 
dians, the  lovers,  the  traitors ;  nobody  was 


lacking  :  soubrettes,  duennas,  coquettes,  first 
walking  ladies.  Wearing  a  sack-coat  and  a 
felt  hat  on  his  long  gray  hair,  the  superb 
adventurer  of  all  the  cloak  and  sword  dramas 


8o        TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

leaned  against  the  shutter  of  a  shop  in  his 
familiar  attitude,  and  crossed  his  arms  to 
show  his  handsome  hands ;  while  a  little 
old  fellow  with  the  wrinkled  face  of  a  clown 
spoke  to  him  briskly  in  the  broad,  harsh 
voice  which  had  so  often  made  us  explode 
with  laughter.  By  the  side  of  the  aged  first 
young  man,  who,  pinched  in  his  scanty 
frock-coat,  and  with  trousers  trailing  under 
foot,  twirled  in  his  gloved  hands  his  locks 
of  over-black  hair,  stood  a  great  handsome 
fellow,  beautiful  as  a  model,  who  had  not 
been  able  to  renounce  even  for  that  day  his 
eccentricities  of  costume,  and  strutted  in  a 
black  velvet  cape  and  the  boots  of  an 
equerry.  Oh,  how  sad,  tired,  and  old  they 
seemed  in  the  gray  light  of  that  winter 
morning,  all  those  pathetic  heads,  graceful 
or  laughable,  which  we  were  only  in  the 
habit  of  seeing  when  transfigured  by  the 
prestige  of  the  stage.  Chins  had  become 
blue-black  under  too  frequent  shaving;  hair 


A   DRAMATIC    FUNERAL.  8 1 

thin  and  dry  under  the  hot 
iron  of  the  hair  -  dresser  ; 
skins  rough  under  the  inju- 
rious action  of  unguents  and 
vinegar;  eyes  dull,  burned 
by  the  glare  of  foot-lights 
— blinded,  almost  fixed,  like 
those  of  an  owl  in  the  sun- 
light. 

The  women  were  espe- 
cially to  be  pitied.  Obliged 
by  the  occasion  to  rise  at 
a  very  early  hour,  and  not 
having  had  the  time  for  a 
careful  and  minute  toilet,  they  gathered  in 
groups  of  four  or  five,  chilled  and  shivering 
in  their  fur  mantles,  muffs,  and  triple  black 
veils.  Notwithstanding  the  hasty  rouge  and 
powder  of  the  morning,  they  were  unrec- 
ognizable, and  it  required  an  effort  of  im- 
agination to  find  in  them  a  memory  of  that 
sublime  seraglio  of  the  Parisian  theatres, 


8  2        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

exposed  every  evening  to  the  desires  of  sev- 
eral thousand  men.  On  all  of  these  charm 
ing  types  appeared  the  mark  of  weariness 
and  age.  Some  ossified  into  faded  skele- 


tons, others  grew  dull  with  an  unhealthy 
weight  of  fat ;  wrinkles  crossed  the  fore- 
heads and  starred  the  temples  ;  lips  were 
livid  and  eyes  circled  with  dark  rings ;  the 


A    DRAMATIC    FUNERAL.  83 

complexions  were  particularly  frightful  —  that 
uniform  tint,  morbid  and  sickly,  the  work  of 
rouge  and  grease-paints.  That  heavy  wom- 
an, with  the  head  and  neck  of  a  farmer's 
wife  (one  almost  sees  a  basket  on  her  shoul- 
der), is  the  terrible  and  fatal  queen  of  grand, 
romantic  dramas ;  and  that  small  blonde  and 
pale  creature,  so  faded  under  her  laces,  and 
who  would  have  completely  filled  a  music- 
teacher's  carrying  roll,  was  the  artless  young 
woman  whom  all  the  vaudevillists  married 
at  the  denouement  of  their  pieces.  There 
were  the  dying  glances  of  the  lorette  in  the 
hospital,  the  pose  of  the  old  copyist  of  the 
Louvre,  and  the  theatrical  sneer. 

Soon  the  cabs  drove  up  with  the  function- 
aries connected  with  the  administration  of 
the  theatre,  in  black  hats  and  coats,  with  an 
official  air  of  sadness ;  young  reporters,  the 
outflow  of  journalism,  staring  at  everybody 
and  taking  notes ;  dramatic  authors,  Mon- 
day feuilletonists  —  in  short,  all  of  those 


84        TEN    TALES   BY   FRANgOIS   COPPEE. 

nocturnal  beings,  tired  and  worn-out,  who  are 
properly  called  the  actives  of  Paris. 

The  groups  became  more  compact,  and 
talked  animatedly.  Old  friends  found  each 
other ;  they  shook  hands,  and,  in  view  of  the 
circumstances,  smiled  cordially,  while  the 
women  saluted  each  other  through  their 
veils. 

In  passing,  we  could  catch  fragments  of 
conversation  like  this  : 

"  When  will  the  affair  begin  ?" 

"  Were  you  at  the  opening  of  the  Varie'tes 
yesterday  ?" 

Theatrical  terms  were  heard — "  My  tal 
ents,"  "  My  charms,"  "  My  physique."  Some 
business,  even,  was  done.  A  new  manager 
was  quite  surrounded  ;  an  old  actress  organ- 
ized her  benefit. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  movement  in  the 
crowd.  The  undertaker's  men  had  just 
placed  the  coffin  in  the  hearse,  and  the 
young  girls  of  the  Sisterhood  of  the  Virgin, 


A   DRAMATIC    FUNERAL.  85 

to  which  the  dead  girl  had  belonged,  ar- 
ranged themselves  in  two  lines,  in  their 
white  veils,  at  the  sides  of  the  funeral-car. 
Preceded  by  the  master  of  ceremonies,  in 
silk  stockings  and  a  wand  of  office  in  his 
hand,  the  poor  father  appeared  on  the  pave- 
ment in  full  mourning,  with  a  white  cravat, 
broken  down  by  grief  and  sustained  by  his 
friends. 

The  procession  set  out  and  came  to  the 
parish  church,  fortunately  near. 

There  was  a  grand  mass,  with  music  which 
was  not  finished.  It  was  too  warm  in  the 
church  stuffed  with  people,  and  the  inatten- 
tion was  general.  Men  who  recognized  each 
other  saluted  with  a  light  movement  of  the 
head ;  conversation  was  exchanged  in  a  low 
voice ;  some  young  actors  struck  attitudes 
for  the  benefit  of  the  women,  and  the  pious 
responded  to  Dominus  Vobiscum  droned  by 
the  priest.  At  the  elevation,  from  behind  the 
altar,  rang  out  a  magnificent  Pie  Jesu,  sung 


86        TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

by  a  celebrated  baritone,  who  had  never 
put  in  his  voice  so  much  amorous  languor 
Outside  the  church-yard  the  small  boys  of 
the  quarter  stood  on  tiptoe,  and,  hanging  on 
to  the  railings,  pointed  out  the  celebrities 
with  their  fingers. 

The  office  finished,  the  long  defile  com- 
menced ;  and  every  one  went  to  the  entrance 
of  the  church  to  sprinkle  some  drops  of  holy- 
water  on  the  bier,  and  press  the  hand  of  the 
old  actor,  who,  broken  by  grief,  and  having 
hardly  strength  to  hold  his  hat,  leaned  against 
a  pillar. 

That  was  the  most  horrible  moment. 

Carried  away  by  the  habit  of  playing  up 
to  the  situation,  all  these  theatrical  people 
put  into  the  token  of  sympathy  which  they 
gave  to  their  friend  the  character  of  their 
employment.  The  star  advanced  gravely,  and 
with  a  three-quarter  inclination  of  his  head 
flashed  out  the  "Look  of  Fate."  The  old 
tragedian  with  a  gray  beard  assumed  a  sto- 


A   DRAMATIC    FUNERAL.  87 

ical  expression,  and  did  not  forget  to  "  vi- 
brate "  in  pronouncing  a  masculine  "  Cour- 
age !"  The  clown  approached  with  a  short, 
trotting  step,  and  shaking  his  head  until  his 
cheeks  trembled,  he  murmured,  "  My  poor 
old  fellow."  And  the  fairy  queen,  with  the 
sensibility  of  a  sensitive  female,  threw  herself 
impulsively  on  the  neck  of  the  unhappy  fa- 
ther, who,  with  swollen  face,  bloodshot  eyes, 
and  hanging  lip,  blackened  his  face  and  his 
gloved  hands  with  the  dye  of  his  mustache, 
diluted  by  tears. 

And  all  the  time,  a  few  steps  from  this 
grotesque  and  sinister  scene,  we  could  see  — 
last  word  of  this  antithesis — the  white  fig- 
ures of  the  young  girls  of  the  sisterhood, 
kneeling  on  the  chairs  nearest  the  coffin  of 
their  companion,  and  who  undoubtedly  were 
beseeching  God,  in  their  naive  and  original 
prayers,  to  grant  her  the  paradise  of  their 
dreams :  a  pretty  paradise  in  the  Jesuitical 
style,  all  in  carved  and  gilded  wood,  and 


88    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

many-colored  marble,  where  one  could  see 
at  the  end  a  tableau  in  a  transparent  light ; 
the  Virgin  crowned  with  stars,  with  a  serpent 
under  her  feet,  while  little  cherubs  suspend- 
ed in  mid-air  over  her  head  an  azure  stream- 
er flaming  with  these  words:  " Eae  Regina 
Angelorum" 


THE    SUBSTITUTE. 


HE  was  scarcely  ten  years  old  when  he 
was  first  arrested  as  a  vagabond. 

He  spoke  thus  to  the  judge  : 

"  I  am  called  Jean  Frangois  Leturc,  and 
for  six  months  I  was  with  the  man  who 
sings  and  plays  upon  a  cord  of  catgut  be- 
tween the  lanterns  at  the  Place  de  la  Bas- 
tille. I  sang  the  refrain  with  him,  and  after 
that  I  called,  '  Here's  all  the  new  songs,  ten 
centimes,  two  sous  !'  He  was  always  drunk, 
and  used  to  beat  me.  That  is  why  the  po- 
lice picked  rne  up  the  other  night.  Before 


92    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

that  I  was  with  the  man  who  sells  brushes. 
My  mother  was  a  laundress ;  her  name  was 
Adele.  At  one  time  she  lived  with  a  man  on 
the  ground-floor  at  Montmartre.  She  was  a 
good  work-woman  and  liked  me.  She  made 
money  because  she  had  for  customers  wait- 
ers in  the  cafes,  and  they  use  a  good  deal  of 
linen.  On  Sundays  she  used  to  put  me  to 
bed  early  so  that  she  could  go  to  the  ball. 
On  week-days  she  sent  me  to  Les  Freres, 
where  I  learned  to  read.  Well,  the  sergeant- 
de-ville  whose  beat  was  in  our  street  used 
always  to  stop  before  our  windows  to  talk 
with  her — a  good-looking  chap,  with  a  med- 
al from  the  Crimea.  They  were  married, 
and  after  that  everything  went  wrong.  He 
didn't  take  to  me,  and  turned  mother  against 
me.  Every  one  had  a  blow  for  me,  and  so, 
to  get  out  of  the  house,  I  spent  whole 
days  in  the  Place  Clichy,  where  I  knew  the 
mountebanks.  My  father-in-law  lost  his 
place,  and  my  mother  her  work.  She  used 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  93 

to  go  out  washing  to  take  care  of  him ;  this 
gave  her  a  cough  —  the  steam.  .  .  .  She  is 
dead  at  Lamboisiere.  She  was  a  good  wom- 
an. Since  that  I  have  lived  with  the  seller 
of  brushes  and  the  catgut  scraper.  Are  you 
going  to  send  me  to  prison  ?" 

He  said  this  openly,  cynically,  like  a  man. 
He  was  a  little  ragged  street-arab,  as  tall  as 
a  boot,  his  forehead  hidden  under  a  queer 
mop  of  yellow  hair. 

Nobody  claimed  him,  and  they  sent  him 
to  the  Reform  School. 

Not  very  intelligent,  idle,  clumsy  with  his 
hands,  the  only  trade  he  could  learn  there 
was  not  a  good  one  — that  of  reseating  straw 
chairs.  However,  he  was  obedient,  natural- 
ly quiet  and  silent,  and  he  did  not  seem  to  be 
profoundly  corrupted  by  that  school  of  vice. 
But  when,  in  his  seventeenth  year,  he  was 
thrown  out  again  on  the  streets  of  Paris,  he 
unhappily  found  there  his  prison  comrades, 
all  great  scamps,  exercising  their  dirty  pro- 


94     TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

fessions  :  teaching  dogs  to  catch  rats  in  the 
the  sewers,  and  blacking  shoes  on  ball  nights 
in  the  passage  of  the  Opera — amateur  wres- 
tlers, who  permitted  themselves  to  be  thrown 
by  the  Hercules  of  the  booths — or  fishing  at 
noontime  from  rafts ;  all  of  these  occupa- 
tions he  followed  to  some  extent,  and,  some 
months  after  he  came  out  of  the  house  of 
correction,  he  was  arrested  again  for  a  petty 
theft — a  pair  of  old  shoes  prigged  from  a 
shop-window.  Result:  a  year  in  the  prison 
of  Sainte  Pelagic,  where  he  served  as  valet 
to  the  political  prisoners. 

He  lived  in  much  surprise  among  this 
group  of  prisoners,  all  very  young,  negligent 
in  dress,  who  talked  in  loud  voices,  and  car- 
ried their  heads  in  a  very  solemn  fashion. 
They  used  to  meet  in  the  cell  of  one  of  the 
oldest  of  them,  a  fellow  of  some  thirty  years, 
already  a  long  time  in  prison  and  quite  a 
fixture  at  Sainte  Pe'lagie — a  large  cell,  the 
walls  covered  with  colored  caricatures,  and 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  95 

from  the  window  of  which  one  could  see  all 
Paris — its  roofs,  its  spires,  and  its  domes — 
and  far  away  the  distant  line  of  hills,  blue  and 
indistinct  upon  the  sky.  There  were  upon  the 
walls  some  shelves  filled  with  volumes  and 
all  the  old  paraphernalia  of  a  fencing-room  : 
broken  masks,  rusty  foils,  breast-plates,  and 
gloves  that  were  losing  their  tow.  It  was 
there  that  the  "politicians"  used  to  dine  to- 
gether, adding  to  the  everlasting  "soup  and 
beef,"  fruit,  cheese,  and  pints  of  wine  which 
Jean  Francois  went  out  and  got  by  the  can 
— a  tumultuous  repast  interrupted  by  violent 
disputes,  and  where,  during  the  dessert,  the 
"  Carmagnole  "  and  "  Ca  Ira  "  were  sung  in 
full  chorus.  They  assumed,  however,  an  air 
of  great  dignity  on  those  days  when  a  new- 
comer was  brought  in  among  them,  at  first 
entertaining  him  gravely  as  a  citizen,  but  on 
the  morrow  using  him  with  affectionate  fa- 
miliarity, and  calling  him  by  his  nickname. 
Great  words  were  used  there :  Corporation, 


96    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

Responsibility,  and  phrases  quite  unintelli- 
gible to  Jean  Fran£ois — such  as  this,  for  ex- 
ample, which  he  once  heard  imperiously  put 
forth  by  a  frightful  little  hunchback  who 
blotted  some  writing-paper  every  night : 

"  It  is  done.  This  is  the  composition  of 
the  Cabinet :  Raymond,  the  Bureau  of  Pub- 
lic Instruction  ;  Martial,  the  Interior ;  and 
for  Foreign  Affairs,  myself." 

His  time  done,  he  wandered  again  around 
Paris,  watched  afar  by  the  police,  after  the 
fashion  of  cockchafers,  made  -by  cruel  chil- 
dren to  fly  at  the  end  of  a  string.  He  be- 
came one  of  those  fugitive  and  timid  beings 
whom  the  law,  with  a  sort  of  coquetry,  ar- 
rests and  releases  by  turn — something  like 
those  platonic  fishers  who,  in  order  that  they 
may  not  exhaust  their  fish-pond,  throw  im- 
mediately back  in  the  water  the  fish  which 
has  just  come  out  of  the  net.  Without  a 
suspicion  on  his  part  that  so  much  honor 
had  been  done  to  so  sorry  a  subject,  he  had 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  97 

a  special  bundle  of  memoranda  in  the  mys- 
terious portfolios  of  the  Rue  de  Jerusalem. 
His  name  was  written  in  round  hand  on  the 
gray  paper  of  the  cover,  and  the  notes  and 
reports,  carefully  classified,  gave  him  his 
successive  appellations  :  "  Name,  Leturc ;" 
"the  prisoner  Leturc,"  and,  at  last,  "the  crim- 
inal Leturc." 

He  was  two  years  out  of  prison,  dining 
where  he  could,  sleeping  in  night  lodging- 
houses  and  sometimes  in  lime-kilns,  and  tak- 
ing part  with  his  fellows  in  interminable 
games  of  pitch -penny  on  the  boulevards 
near  the  barriers.  He  wore  a  greasy  cap 
on  the  back  of  his  head,  carpet  slippers,  and 
a  short  white  blouse.  When  he  had  five 
sous  he  had  his  hair  curled.  He  danced 
at  Constant's  at  Montparnasse ;  bought  for 
two  sous  to  sell  for  four  at  the  door  of 
Bobino,  the  jack  of  hearts  or  the  ace  of 
clubs  serving  as  a  countermark  ;  sometimes 
opened  the  door  of  a  carriage ;  led  horses 


98        TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

to  the  horse -market.  From  the  lottery  of 
all  sorts  of  miserable  employments  he  drew 
a  goodly  number.  Who  can  say  if  the  at- 
mosphere of  honor  which  one  breathes  as  a 
soldier,  if  military  discipline  might  not  have 
saved  him.  Taken,  in  a  cast  of  the  net,  with 
some  young  loafers  who  robbed  drunkards 
sleeping  on  the  streets,  he  denied  very  ear- 
nestly having  taken  part  in  their  expeditions. 
Perhaps  he  told  the  truth,  but  his  antece- 
dents were  accepted  in  lieu  of  proof,  and  he 
was  sent  for  three  years  to  Poissy.  There 
he  made  coarse  playthings  for  children,  was 
tattooed  on  the  chest,  learned  thieves'  slang 
and  the  penal-code.  A  new  liberation,  and 
a  new  plunge  into  the  sink  of  Paris ;  but 
very  short  this  time,  for  at  the  end  of  six 
months  at  the  most  he  was  again  compro- 
mised in  a  night  robbery,  aggravated  by 
climbing  and  breaking — a  serious  affair,  in 
which  he  played  an  obscure  role,  half  dupe 
and  half  fence.  On  the  whole  his  complicity 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  99 

was  evident,  and  he  was  sent  for  five  years 
at  hard  labor.  His  grief  in  this  adventure 
was  above  all  in  being  separated  from  an 
old  dog  which  he  had  found  on  a  dung-heap, 
and  cured  of  the  mange.  The  beast  loved 
him. 

Toulon,  the  ball  and  chain,  the  work  in 
the  harbor,  the  blows  from  a  stick,  wooden 
shoes  on  bare  feet,  soup  of  black  beans  dat- 
ing from  Trafalgar,  no  tobacco  money,  and 
the  terrible  sleep  in  a  camp  swarming  with 
convicts;  that  was  what  he  experienced  for 
five  broiling  summers  and  five  winters  raw 
with  the  Mediterranean  wind.  He  came 
out  from  there  stunned,  was  sent  under  sur- 
veillance to  Vernon,  where  he  worked  some 
time  on  the  river.  Then,  an  incorrigible 
vagabond,  he  broke  his  exile  and  came  again 
to  Paris.  He  had  his  savings,  fifty-six  francs, 
that  is  to  say,  time  enough  for  reflection. 
During  his  absence  his  former  wretched 
companions  had  dispersed.  He  was  well 


100  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANgOIS  COPPEE. 

hidden,  and  slept  in  a  loft  at  an  old  wom- 
an's, to  whom  he  represented  himself  as  a 
sailor,  tired  of  the  sea,  who  had  lost  his  pa- 
pers in  a  recent  shipwreck,  and  who  wanted 
to  try  his  hand  at  some- 
thing else.  His  tanned 
face  and  his  calloused 
brands,  together  with  some 
sea  phrases  which  he  drop- 
ped from  time  to  time, 
made  his  tale  seem  prob- 
able enough. 

One  day  when  he  risked 
a  saunter  in  the  streets, 
and  when  chance  had  led 
him  as  far  as  Montmartre, 
where  he  was  born,  an  un- 
expected memory  stopped  him  before  the 
door  of  Les  Freres,  where  he  had  learned  to 
read.  •xAs  it  was  very  warm  the  door  was 
open,  and  by  a  single  glance  the  passing  out- 
cast was  able  to  recognize  the  peaceable 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  IOI 

school-room.  Nothing  was  changed :  nei- 
ther the  bright  light  shining  in  at  the  great 
windows,  nor  the  crucifix  over  the  desk,  nor 
the  rows  of  benches  with  the  tables  fur- 
nished with  ink-stands  and  pencils,  nor  the 
table  of  weights  and  measures,  nor  the  map 
where  pins  stuck  in  still  indicated  the  opera- 
tions of  some  ancient  war.  Heedlessly  and 
without  thinking,  Jean  Francois  read  on  the 
blackboard  the  words  of  the  Evangelist 
which  had  been  set  there  as  a  copy  : 

"Joy  shall  be  in  heaven  over  one  sinner 
that  repenteth,  more  than  over  ninety  and 
nine  just  persons,  which  need  no  repent- 
ance." 

It  was  undoubtedly  the  hour  for  recrea- 
tion, for  the  Brother  Professor  had  left  his 
chair,  and,  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  table,  he 
was  telling  a  story  to  the  boys  who  sur- 
rounded him  with  eager  and  attentive  eyes. 
What  a  bright  and  innocent  face  he  had,  that 
beardless  young  man,  in  his  long  black 


IO2     TEN   TALES   BY   FRANCOIS   COPPEE. 

gown,  and  white  necktie,  and  great  ugly 
shoes,  and  his  badly  cut  brown  hair  stream- 
ing out  behind!  All  the  simple  figures  of 
the  children  of  the  people  who  were  watch- 
ing him  seemed  scarcely  less  childlike  than 
his ;  above  all  when,  delighted  with  some  of 
his  own  simple  and  priestly  pleasantries,  he 
broke  out  in  an  open  and  frank  peal  of 
laughter  which  showed  his  white  and  regu- 
lar teeth,  a  peal  so  contagious  that  all  the 
scholars  laughed  loudly  in  their  turn.  It 
was  such  a  sweet,  simple  group  in  the  bright 
sunlight,  which  lighted  their  dear  eyes  and 
their  blond  curls. 

Jean  Francois  looked  at  them  for  some 
time  in  silence,  and  for  the  first  time  in  that 
savage  nature,  all  instinct  and  appetite,  there 
awoke  a  mysterious,  a  tender  emotion.  His 
heart,  that  seared  and  hardened  heart,  un- 
moved when  the  convict's  cudgel  or  the 
heavy  whip  of  the  watchman  fell  on  his 
shoulders,  beat  oppressively.  In  that  sight 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  103 

he  saw  again  his  infancy ;  and  closing  his 
eyes  sadly,  the  prey  to  torturing  regret,  he 
walked  quickly  away. 

Then  the  words  written  on  the  blackboard 
came  back  to  his  mind. 

"If  it  wasn't  too  late,  after  all !"  he  mur- 
mured ;  "if  I  could  again,  like  others,  eat 
honestly  my  brown  bread,  and  sleep  my  fill 
without  nightmare  !  The  spy  must  be  sharp 
who  recognizes  me.  My  beard,  which  I 
shaved  off  down  there,  has  grown  out  thick 
and  strong.  One  can  burrow  somewhere  in 
the  great  ant-hill,  and  work  can  be  found. 
Whoever  is  not  worked  to  death  in  the  hell 
of  the  galleys  comes  out  agile  and  robust, 
and  I  learned  there  to  climb  ropes  with  loads 
upon  my  back.  Building  is  going  on  every- 
where here,  and  the  masons  need  helpers. 
Three  francs  a  day !  I  never  earned  so 
much.  Let  me  be  forgotten,  and  that  is  all 
I  ask." 

He  followed  his  courageous  resolution  ;  he 


104    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

was  faithful  to  it,  and  after  three  months  he 
was  another  man.  The  master  for  whom  he 
worked  called  him  his  best  workman.  After 
a  long  day  upon  the  scaffolding,  in  the  hot 
sun  and  the  dust,  constantly  bending  and 
raising  his  back  to  take  the  hod  from  the 
man  at  his  feet  and  pass  it  to  the  man  over 
his  head,  he  went  for  his  soup  to  the  cook- 
shop,  tired  out,  his  legs  aching,  his  hands 
burning,  his  eyelids  stuck  with  plaster,  but 
content  with  himself,  and  carrying  his  well- 
earned  money  in  a  knot  in  his  handkerchief. 
He  went  out  now  without  fear,  since  he 
could  not  be  recognized  in  his  white  mask, 
and  since  he  had  noticed  that  the  suspicious 
glances  of  the  policeman  were  seldom  turned 
on  the  tired  workman.  He  was  quiet  and 
sober.  He  slept  the  sound  sleep  of  fatigue. 
He  was  free! 

At  last  —  oh,  supreme  recompense!  —  he 
had  a  friend ! 

He  was  a  fellow-workman  like  himself, 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  105 

named  Savinien,  a  little  peasant  with  red 
lips  who  had  come  to  Paris  with  his  stick 
over  his  shoulder  and  a  bundle  on  the  end 
of  it,  fleeing  from  the  wine-shops  and  going 
to  mass  every  Sunday.  Jean  Frangois  loved 
him  for  his  piety,  for  his  candor,  for  his  hon- 
esty, for  all  that  he  himself  had  lost,  and  so 
long  ago.  It  was  a  passion,  profound  and 
unrestrained,  which  transformed  him  by  fa- 
therly cares  and  attentions.  Savinien,  him- 
self of  a  weak  and  egotistical  nature,  let 
things  take  their  course,  satisfied  only  in 
finding  a  companion  who  shared  his  horror 
of  the  wine-shop.  The  two  friends  lived  to- 
gether in  a  fairly  comfortable  lodging,  but 
their  resources  were  very  limited.  They  were 
obliged  to  take  into  their  room  a  third  com- 
panion, an  old  Auvergnat,  gloomy  and  ra- 
pacious, who  found  it  possible  out  of  his 
meagre  salary  to  save  something  with  which 
to  buy  a  place  in  his  own  country.  Jean 
Frangois  and  Savinien  were  always  together. 


IO6  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

On  holidays  they  together  took  long  walks 
in  the  environs  of  Paris,  and  dined  under 
an  arbor  in  one  of  those  small  country 
inns  where  there  are  a  great  many  mush- 
rooms in  the  sauces  and  innocent  rebusses 
on  the  napkins.  There  Jean  Francois  learn- 
ed from  his  friend  all  that  lore  of  which  they 
who  are  born  in  the  city  are  ignorant : 
learned  the  names  of  the  trees,  the  flowers, 
and  the  plants  ;  the  various  seasons  for  har- 
vesting; he  heard  eagerly  the  thousand  de- 
tails of  a  laborious  country  life — the  autumn 
sowing,  the  winter  chores,  the  splendid  cel- 
ebrations of  harvest  and  vintage  days,  the 
sound  of  the  mills  at  the  water-side,  and  the 
flails  striking  the  ground,  the  tired  horses 
led  to  water,  and  the  hunting  in  the  morn- 
ing mist ;  and,  above  all,  the  long  evenings 
around  the  fire  of  vine -shoots,  that  were 
shortened  by  some  marvellous  stories.  He 
discovered  in  himself  a  source  of  imagina- 
tion before  unknown,  and  found  a  singular 


THE  SUBSTITUTE.  107 

delight  in  the  recital  of  events  so  placid,  so 
calm,  so  monotonous. 

One  thing  troubled  him,  however :  it  was 
the  fear  lest  Savinien  might  learn  something 
of  his  past.  Sometimes  there  escaped  from 
him  some  low  word  of  thieves'  slang,  a  vul- 
gar gesture — vestiges  of  his  former  horrible 
existence— and  he  felt  the  pain  one  feels 
when  old  wounds  re-open ;  the  more  because 
he  fancied  that  he  sometimes  saw  in  Savin- 
ien the  awakening  of  an  unhealthy  curiosity. 
When  the  young  man,  already  tempted  by 
the  pleasures  which  Paris  offers  to  the  poor- 
est, asked  him  about  the  mysteries  of  the 
great  city,  Jean  Francois  feigned  ignorance 
and  turned  the  subject ;  but  he  felt  a  vague 
inquietude  for  the  future  of  his  friend. 

His  uneasiness  was  not  without  founda- 
tion. Savinien  could  not  long  remain  the 
simple  rustic  that  he  was  on  his  arrival  in 
Paris.  If  the  gross  and  noisy  pleasures  of 
the  wine-shop  always  repelled  him,  he  was 


Io8  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

profoundly  troubled  by  other  temptations,  full 
of  danger  for  the  inexperience  of  his  twenty 
years.  When  spring  came  he  began  to  go 
off  alone,  and  at  first  he  wandered  about 
the  brilliant  entrance  of  some  dancing-hall, 
watching  the  young  girls  who  went  in  with 
their  arms  around  each  others'  waists,  talk- 
ing in  low  tones.  Then,  one  evening,  when 
lilacs  perfumed  the  air  and  the  call  to  qua- 
drilles was  most  captivating,  he  crossed  the 
threshold,  and  from  that  time  Jean  Frangois 
observed  a  change,  little  by  little,  in  his 
manners  and  his  visage.  He  became  more 
frivolous,  more  extravagant.  He  often  bor- 
rowed from  his  friend  his  scanty  savings, 
and  he  forgot  to  repay.  Jean  Frangois,  feel- 
ing that  he  was  abandoned,  jealous  and  for- 
giving at  the  same  time,  suffered  and  was 
silent.  He  felt  that  he  had  no  right  to  re- 
proach him,  but  with  the  foresight  of  affec- 
tion he  indulged  in  cruel  and  inevitable 
presentiments. 


THE  SUBSTITUTE.  109 

One  evening,  as  he  was  mounting  the 
stairs  to  his  room,  absorbed  in  his  thoughts, 
he  heard,  as  he  was  about  to  enter,  the  sound 
of  angry  voices,  and  he  recognized  that  of 
the  old  Auvergnat  who  lodged  with  Savinien 
and  himself.  An  old  habit  of  suspicion  made 
him  stop  at  the  landing-place  and  listen  to 
learn  the  cause  of  the  trouble. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Auvergnat,  angrily,  "  I  am 
sure  that  some  one  has  opened  my  trunk 
and  stolen  from  it  the  three  louis  that  I 
had  hidden  in  a  little  box ;  and  he  who  has 
done  this  thing  must  be  one  of  the  two 
companions  who  sleep  here,  if  it  were  not 
the  servant  Maria.  It  concerns  you  as  much 
as  it  does  me,  since  you  are  the  master  of 
the  house,  and  I  will  drag  you  to  the  courts 
if  you  do  not  let  me  at  once  break  open  the 
valises  of  the  two  masons.  My  poor  gold  ! 
It  was  here  yesterday  in  its  place,  and  I  will 
tell  you  just  what  it  was,  so  that  if  we  find 
it  again  nobody  can  accuse  me  of  having 


110     TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

lied.  Ah,  I  know  them,  my  three  beautiful 
gold  pieces,  and  I  can  see  them  as  plainly 
as  I  see  you !  One  piece  was  more  worn 
than  the  others ;  it  was  of  greenish  gold, 
with  a  portrait  of  the  great  emperor.  The 
other  was  a  great  old  fellow  with  a  queue 
and  epaulettes ;  and  the  third,  which  had 
on  it  a  Philippe  with  whiskers,  I  had  marked 
with  my  teeth.  They  don't  trick  me.  Do 
you  know  that  I  only  wanted  two  more  like 
that  to  pay  for  my  vineyard  ?  Come,  search 
these  fellows'  things  with  me,  or  I  will  call 
the  police  !  Hurry  up !" 
"All  right,"  said  the  voice  of  the  landlord; 
"  we  will  go  and  search  with  Maria.  So 
much  the  worse  for  you  if  we 
find  nothing,  and  the  masons 
get  angry.  You  have  forced 
me  to  it." 

Jean    Fran£ois'  soul 
was  full  of  fright.     He 
remembered  the  em- 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  Ill 

barrassed  circumstances  and  the  small  loans 
of  Savinien,  and  how  sober  he  had  seemed 
for  some  days.  And  yet  he  could  not  be- 
lieve that  he  was  a  thief.  He  heard  the 
Auvergnat  panting  in  his  eager  search,  and 
he  pressed  his  closed  fists  against  his  breast 
as  if  to  still  the  furious  beating  of  his 
heart. 

"  Here  they  are !"  suddenly  shouted  the 
victorious  miser.  "  Here  they  are,  my  louis, 
my  dear  treasure ;  and  in  the  Sunday  vest 
of  that  little  hypocrite  of  Limousin  !  Look, 
landlord,  they  are  just  as  I  told  you.  Here 
is  the  Napoleon,  the  man  with  a  queue,  and 
the  Philippe  that  I  have  bitten.  See  the 
dents  ?  Ah,  the  little  beggar  with  the  sanc- 
tified air.  I  should  have  much  sooner  sus- 
pected the  other.  Ah,  the  wretch  !  Well,  he 
must  go  to  the  convict  prison." 

At  this  moment  Jean  Francois  heard  the 
well-known  step  of  Savinien  coming  slowly 
up  the  stairs. 


112      TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

He  is  going  to  his  destruction,  thought  he. 
Three  stories.  I  have  time  ! 

And,  pushing  open  the  door,  he  entered 
the  room,  pale  as  death,  where  he  saw  the 
landlord  and  the  servant  stupefied  in  a  cor- 
ner, while  the  Auvergnat,  on  his  knees,  in  the 
disordered  heap  of  clothes,  was  kissing  the 
pieces  of  gold. 

"  Enough  of  this,"  he  said,  in  a  thick  voice ; 
"  I  took  the  money,  and  put  it  in  my  com- 
rade's trunk.  But  that  is  too  bad.  I  am  a 
thief,  but  not  a  Judas.  Call  the  police ;  I 
will  not  try  to  escape,  only  I  must  say  a 
word  to  Savinien  in  private.  Here  he  is." 

In  fact,  the  little  Limousin  had  just  ar- 
rived, and  seeing  his  crime  discovered,  be- 
lieving himself  lost,  he  stood  there,  his  eyes 
fixed,  his  arms  hanging. 

Jean  Francois  seized  him  forcibly  by  the 
neck,  as  if  to  embrace  him ;  he  put  his  mouth 
close  to  Savinien's  ear,  and  said  to  him  in  a 
low,  supplicating  voice, 


THE  SUBSTITUTE.  113 

"  Keep  quiet." 

Then  turning  towards  the  others : 

"  Leave  me  alone  with  him.  I  tell  you  I 
won't  go  away.  Lock  us  in  if  you  wish,  but 
leave  us  alone." 

With  a  commanding  gesture  he  showed 
them  the  door. 


They  went   out. 

Savinien,  broken  by  grief,  was  sitting  on 
the  bed,  and  lowered  his  eyes  without  un- 
derstanding anything. 


114  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPED. 

"Listen,"  said  Jean  Francois,  who  came 
and  took  him  by  the  hands.  "  I  understand ! 
You  have  stolen  three  gold  pieces  to  buy 
some  trifle  for  a  girl.  That  costs  six  months 
in  prison.  But  one  only  comes  out  from 
there  to  go  back  again,  and  you  will  become 
a  pillar  of  police  courts  and  tribunals.  I 
understand  it.  I  have  been  seven  years  at 
the  Reform  School,  a  year  at  Sainte  Pelagic, 
three  years  at  Poissy,  five  years  at  Toulon. 
Now,  don't  be  afraid.  Everything  is  ar- 
ranged. I  have  taken  it  on  my  shoulders." 

"  It  is  dreadful,"  said  Savinien  ;  but  hope 
was  springing  up  again  in  his  cowardly  heart. 

"When  the  elder  brother  is  under  the 
flag,  the  younger  one  does  not  go,"  replied 
Jean  Fran£ois.  "  I  am  your  substitute,  that's 
all.  You  care  for  me  a  little,  do  you  not? 
I  am  paid.  Don't  be  childish — don't  refuse. 
They  would  have  taken  me  again  one  of 
these  days,  for  I  am  a  runaway  from  exile. 
And  then,  do  you  see,  that  life  will  be  less 


THE   SUBSTITUTE.  115 

hard  for  me  than  for  you.  I  know  it  all, 
and  I  shall  not  complain  if  I  have  not  done 
you  this  service  for  nothing,  and  if  you  swear 
to  me  that  you  will  never  do  it  again.  Savin- 
ien,  I  have  loved  you  well,  and  your  friend- 
ship has  made  me  happy.  It  is  through  it 
that,  since  I  have  known  you,  I  have  been 
honest  and  pure,  as  I  might  always  have 
been,  perhaps,  if  I  had  had,  like  you,  a  father 
to  put  a  tool  in  my  hands,  a  mother  to  teach 
me  my  prayers.  It  was  my  sole  regret  that 
I  was  useless  to  you,  and  that  I  deceived 
you  concerning  myself.  To-day  I  have  un- 
masked in  saving  you.  It  is  all  right.  Do 
not  cry,  and  embrace  me,  for  already  I  hear 
heavy  boots  on  the  stairs.  They  are  com- 
ing with  the  posse,  and  we  must  not  seem 
to  know  each  other  so  well  before  those 
chaps." 

He  pressed  Savinien  quickly  to  his  breast, 
then  pushed  him  from  him,  when  the  door 
was  thrown  wide  open. 


Il6     TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

It  was  the  landlord  and  the  Auvergnat, 
who  brought  the  police.  Jean  Francois 
sprang  forward  to  the  landing-place,  held 
out  his  hands  for  the  handcuffs,  and  said, 
laughing,  "  Forward,  bad  lot !" 

To-day  he  is  at  Cayenne,  condemned  for 
life  as  an  incorrigible. 


AT    TABLE. 


WHEN  the  maitre  (T  hotel —  oh,  what  a  re- 
spectable paunch  in  an  ample  kerseymere 
vest !  What  a  worthy  and  red  face,  well 
framed  by  white  whiskers !  (an  English  phy- 
sique, I  assure  you)  —  when  the  imposing 
mattre  cT hotel  opened  with  two  raps  the  door 
of  the  salon,  and  announced  in  his  musical 
bass  voice,  at  the  same  time  sonorous  and 
respectful,  "  The  dinner  of  madame  la  com- 
tesse  is  served,"  hats  were  hung  on  the 


120     TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

corners  of  brackets,  while  the  more  distin- 
guished of  the  guests  offered  their  arms  to 
the  ladies,  and  all  passed  into  the  dining- 
room,  silent,  almost  meditative,  like  a  pro- 
cession. 

The  table  glittered.  What  flowers  !  What 
lights  !  Each  guest  found  his  place  without 
difficulty.  As  soon  as  he  had  read  his  name 
on  the  glazed  card,  a  grand  lackey  in  silk 
stockings  pushed  gently  behind  him  a  lux- 
urious chair  embroidered  with  a  count's  cor- 
onet. Fourteen  at  the  table,  not  more :  four 
young  women  in  full  toilets,  and  ten  men 
belonging  to  the  aristocracy  of  blood  or  of 
merit,  who  had  put  on  that  evening  all  their 
orders  in  honor  of  a  foreign  diplomat  sit- 
ting at  the  right  hand  of  the  mistress  of  the 
house.  Clusters  of  jewelled  decorations 
hung  from  button-holes,  plaques  of  diamonds 
glittered  in  the  lapel  of  one  or  two  black 
coats,  a  heavy  commander's  cross  sparkled 
on  the  starched  front  of  a  general  with  a 


AT  TABLE. 


121 


red  cravat.     As  to  the  ladies,  they  bore  all 
the  splendors  of  their  jewel-boxes. 


An  elegant  and  exquisite  reunion !  What 
an  atmosphere  of  good -living  in  the  high 
hall — splendidly  decorated  and  ornamented 
on  its  four  panels  with  studies  for  a  dining- 
hall  in  the  fine  style  of  olden  days — where 


122      TEN    TALES    BY    FRANgOIS   COPPEE. 

were  fruits,  venison,  and  eatables  of  all  sorts. 
The  service  of  the  table  was  noiseless ;  the 
domestics  seemed  to  glide  upon  the  thick 
carpet.  The  butler  whispered  the  wines  in 
the  ears  of  the  guests  with  a  confidential 
tone,  and  as  if  he  were  revealing  a  secret 
upon  which  life  depended. 

At  the  soup  —  a  consomme  at  the  same 
time  mild  and  stimulating,  giving  force  and 
youthful  vigor  to  the  digestion  —  chat  be- 
tween neighbors  began.  Undoubtedly  these 
were  the  merest  trifles  that  were  at  first  so 
low  spoken.  But  what  politeness  in  the 
grave  gestures  !  What  affability  in  looks 
and  smiles!  Soon  after  the  Chateau-yquem, 
wit  sparkled.  These  men,  for  the  most  part 
old  or  very  mature,  all  remarkable  through 
birth  or  through  talent,  had  lived  much;  full 
of  experience  and  memories,  they  were  made 
for  conversation,  and  the  beauty  of  the  wom- 
en present  inspired  them  with  a  desire  to 
shine,  and  excited  them  to  a  courteous  rival- 


AT   TABLE.  123 

ry.  There  was  a  snapping  of  bright  words, 
a  flight  of  sudden  sallies,  and  the  conversa- 
tionalists broke  into  groups  of  two  or  three. 
A  famous  voyager  with  bronzed  skin,  recent- 
ly returned  from  the  farthest  deserts,  told  his 
two  neighbors  of  an  elephant  hunt,  without 
any  boasting,  with  as  much  tranquillity  as 
though  he  were  speaking  of  shooting  rabbits. 
Farther  off,  the  fine  profile  and  white  hair  of 
an  illustrious  savant  was  gallantly  inclined 
towards  the  comtesse,  who  listened  to  him 
laughing — a  very  slender  blonde,  her  eyes 
young  and  intent,  with  a  collar  of  splendid 
emeralds  on  a  bosom  like  a  professional 
beauty,  and  the  neck  and  shoulders  of  the 
Venus  de  Medici. 

Decidedly  the  dinner  promised  to  be 
charming  as  well  as  sumptuous.  Ennui, 
that  too  frequent  guest  at  mundane  feasts, 
would  not  come  to  sit  at  that  table.  These 
fortunate  ones  were  going  to  pass  a  deli 


cious  hour,  drinking  enjoyment  through  ev- 
ery pore,  by  every  sense. 

Now,  at  that  same  table,  at  the  lower  end, 
in  the  most  modest  place,  a  man  still  young, 
the  least  qualified,  the  most  obscure  of  all 
who  were  there,  a  man  of  reverie  and  imag- 
ination, one  of  those  dreamers  in  whom  is 
something  of  philosophy,  something  of  poe- 
try, sat  silent. 

Admitted  into  that  high  society  by  virtue 
of  his  renown  as  an  artist,  one  of  nature's 
aristocrats  but  without  vanity,  sprung  from 
the  people  and  not  forgetting  it,  he  breathed 
voluptuously  that  flower  of  civilization  which 
is  called  good  company. 


AT   TABLE.  125 

He  knew — none  better  than  he — how  ev- 
erything in  this  environment — the  charm  of 
the  women,  the  wit  of  the  men,  the  glitter- 
ing table,  the  furnishing  of  the  hall,  to  the 
exquisite  wine  which  he  had  just  touched 
to  his  lips — how  everything  was  choice  and 
rare,  and  he  rejoiced  that  a  concourse  of 
things  so  lovely  and  so  harmonious  existed. 
He  was  plunged  in  a  bath  of  optimism ;  it 
seemed  to  him  good  that  there  should  be, 
sometimes  and  somewhere  in  the  weary 
world,  beings  almost  happy.  Provided  that 
they  were  accessible  to  pity,  charitable — and 
these  happy  people  probably  were  that — 
who  could  distress  them  ?  what  could  injure 
them?  Ah,  beautiful  and  consoling  chime- 
ra to  believe  that  for  such  as  these  life  is 
pleasant ;  that  they  retain  always  —  or  al- 
most always  —  that  gay,  happy  light  in  the 
eye,  that  half -blossomed  smile  upon  the 
lips ;  that  they  have  blotted  out,  as  far 
as  possible,  from  their  existence,  imperious 


126     TEN  TALES   BY  FRANQOiS  COPPfcE. 

and  discreditable  desires  and  abject  infirmi- 
ties. 

He  whom  we  will  call  the  Dreamer  was 
pursuing  that  train  of  thought,  when  the 
maltre  d'Mtel — the  superb  malt  re  d'hbtel — en- 
tered with  solemnity,  carrying  in  a  great  sil- 
ver plate  a  turbot  of  fabulous  dimensions — 
one  of  those  phenomenal  fish  which  are  only 
seen  in  the  old  paintings  representing  the 
miraculous  draught  of  fish,  or  perhaps  in 
the  window  of  Chevet,  before  a  row  of  as- 
tonished street-boys  who  flatten  their  noses 
against  the  glass  window. 

Dinner  is  served.  But  when  the  Dreamer 
had  before  him  on  his  plate  a  portion  of 
the  monstrous  turbot,  the  light  odor  of  the 
sea  evoked  in  his  mind,  prone  to  unexpected 
suggestions,  that  corner  of  Breton,  that  poor 
village  of  sailors,  where  he  had  been  belated 
the  other  autumn  until  the  equinox,  and 
where  he  had  rendered  assistance  in  some 


AT  TABLE.  127 

dreadful  storms.  He  suddenly  called  to 
mind  that  terrible  night  when  the  fishing- 
boats  could  not  come  back  to  port,  the  night 
that  he  had  passed  on  the  mole  amid  a 
group  of  frightened  women,  standing  where 
the  sea-spray  streamed  down  his  face,  and 
the  cold  and  furious  wind  seemed  striving 
to  tear  his  clothes  from  his  back.  What 
a  life  was  theirs,  those  poor  men !  Down 
there  how  many  widows,  young  and  old, 
wearing  always  the  black  shawl,  went  at 
break  of  day,  with  their  swarms  of  chil- 
dren, to  earn  their  bread  —  oh,  nothing  but 
bread ! — working  in  the  sickening  smell  of 
hot  oil  in  the  sardine  factories  !  He  saw 
again  in  memory  the  church  above  the  vil- 
lage, half-way  up  the  cliff,  the  steeple  paint- 
ed white  to  show  to  the  distant  boats  the 
passage  between  the  reefs ;  and  he  saw, 
also,  in  the  short  grass  of  the  cemetery 
nibbled  by  the  sheep,  the  gravestones  on 
which  this  sinister  inscription  was  so  often 


128  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

repeated:  "Lost  at  sea"    "Lost  at  sea"  "Lost 
at  sea." 

The  enormous  turbot  was  of  savory  and 
delicate  taste,  and  the  shrimp  sauce  with 
which  it  was  served  proved  that  the  chef  of 
the  comte  had  followed  a  course  in  cook- 
ing at  the  Cafd  Anglais  and  profited  by  it. 
For  our  refined  civilization  reaches  even  this 
point.  One  takes  degrees  in  culinary  sci- 
ence. There  are  doctors  in  roasts  and  bach- 
elors in  sauces.  All  of  the  guests  eat  as  if 
they  appreciated,  and  with  delicate  gestures, 
but  without  showing  special  favor  for  excep- 
tional dishes,  through  good  form  and  because 
they  were  habituated  to  exquisite  food. 

The  Dreamer  himself  had  no  appetite. 
He  was  still  in  thought  with  the  Bretons, 
with  the  sons  of  the  sea,  who  had  caught,  per- 
haps, this  magnificent  turbot.  He  remember- 
ed the  day  that  followed  the  tempest— that 
morning,  rainy  and  gray — when,  walking  by 


AT    TABLE. 


I29 


the  heavy,  leaden  sea,  he  had  found  a  body 
at  his  feet  and  recognized  it  as  that  of  an  old 
sailor,  the  father  of  a  family,  who  had  been 
lost  at  sea  three  days  before — mournful  jet- 
sam, stranded  in  the  wrack  and  foam,  so 
heart-rending  to  see,  with  the  gray  hair  of 
the  drowned  full  of  sand  and  shells  ! 

A  shudder  passed  over  his  heart. 

But  the  lackeys  had  already  removed  the 
plates  ;  every  trace  of  the  giant  fish  had  dis- 
appeared, and  while  they  were  serving  an- 
other course,  the  diners,  elegant  triflers,  had 
taken  up  their  chat  again. 
Hunger  being  already  some- 
what appeased,  they  were 
more  animated,  they  spoke 
with  more  abandon  —  light 
laughs  ran  round.  Oh,  charm- 
ing and  gracious  company ! 

Then  the  Dreamer,  the  si- 
lent guest,  was  seized  with  an 


130    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

infinite  sadness ;  for  all  the  work  and  dis- 
tress that  were  required  to  create  this  com- 
fort and  well-being  came  surging  on  his 
imagination. 

That  these  men  of  the  world  might  wear 
light  dress-coats  in  mid-December,  that  these 
women  might  expose  their  arms  and  their 
shoulders,  the  temperature  of  the  room  was 
that  of  a  spring  morning.  And  who  fur- 
nished the  coal  ?  The  poor  devils  of  the 
black  country,  the  subterranean  workmen 
who  lived  in  hellish  mines.  How  white  and 
fresh  is  the  complexion  of  that  young  wom- 
an against  her  corsage  of  pink  satin  !  But 
who  had  woven  that  satin  ?  The  human 
spider  of  Lyons,  the  weaver,  always  at  his 
trade  in  the  leprous  houses  of  the  Croix 
Rousse.  She  wears  in  her  tiny  ears  two 
beautiful  pearls.  What  brilliancy!  what  opal- 
ine transparence  !  Almost  perfect  spheres ! 
The  pearl  which  Cleopatra  dissolved  in  vine- 
gar and  swallowed,  and  which  was  worth 


AT   TABLE.  13! 

ten  thousand  sesterces,  was  not  more  pure. 
But  does  she  know,  that  young  woman,  that 
in  far-off  Ceylon,  on  the  pearl-oyster  banks 
of  Arripo  and  Condatchy,  the  Indians  of  the 
Indian  Company  plunge  heroically  down  in 
twelve  fathoms  of  water,  one  foot  in  the 
heavy  stone  weight  which  drags  them  down 
to  the  bottom,  a  knife  in  the  left  hand  for 
defence  against  the  shark  ? 

But  what  of  that  ?  One  is  lovely  and  co- 
quettish. The  air  of  the  dining-hall  is  warm 
and  perfumed.  There  one  can  dine  gaily, 
adorned  and  half  nude,  flirting  with  one's 
neighbors.  What  has  one  to  do,  I  ask  you, 
with  a  dark  workman,  who  digs  fifty  feet 
under  the  ground,  with  a  weaver  sitting  with 
stiffened  joints  before  the  loom,  with  a  savage 
who  emerges  from  the  sea  and  sometimes 
reddens  it  with  his  blood  ?  Why  should  one 
think  of  things  so  sad,  so  ugly  ?  What  an  ab- 
surdity ! 


132      TEN    TALES    BY    FRANgOIS    COPPEE. 

Meanwhile  the  Dreamer  pursued  his  train 
of  thought. 

An  instant  ago,  without  taking  thought, 
mechanically  he  crumbled  on  the  cloth  a  bit 
of  the  gilded  bread  which  was  placed  near 
his  napkin.  As  a  viand,  a  mere  bit  of  fancy, 
insignificant  in  such  a  repast,  it  made  him 
think  of  the  naif  phrase  of  the  great  lady 
concerning  the  starving  wretches  —  "Let 
them  eat  cake."  Nevertheless,  this  little 
cake  is  bread  all  the  same — bread  made  of 
flour,  which  in  turn  is  made  of  wheat.  Great 
heaven  !  yes,  it  is  bread,  simply  bread,  like 
the  loaf  of  the  peasant,  like  the  bran-roll  of 
the  soldier;  and  that  it  might  be  here,  on 
the  table  of  the  rich,  required  the  patient  la- 
bor of  many  poor. 

The  peasant  labored,  sowed,  reaped.  He 
pushed  his  plough  or  led  his  harrow  across 
the  fertile  field,  under  the  cold  needles  of 
the  autumn  rain  ;  he  started  from  sleep,  full 
of  terror  for  his  crop,  when  it  thundered  by 


AT   TABLE.  133 

night;  he  trembled,  seeing  the  passage  of 
great  violet  clouds  charged  with  hail ;  he 
went  forth,  dissatisfied  and  gloomy,  to  the 
heavy  work  and  exhausting  labor  of  har- 
vest. 

And  when  the  old  miller,  twisted  by  rheu- 
matism which  he  has  caught  in  the  river 
fogs,  has  sent  the  flour  to  Paris,  the  market- 
porters  with  the  great  white  hats  have  car- 
ried the  crushing  sacks  on  their  broad  backs, 
and  last  night,  even,  in  the  baker's  cellar  the 
workmen  toiled  until  morning. 

Verily,  yes !  It  has  cost  all  these  efforts, 
all  these  pains — the  bit  of  bread  carelessly 
broken  by  the  white  hands  of  these  pa- 
tricians. 

And  now  the  incorrigible  Dreamer  was 
possessed  by  these  things.  The  delicacies 
of  the  repast  only  recalled  to  him  the  suf- 
fering of  humanity.  Presently,  when  the 
butler  poured  for  him  a  glass  of  Chambertin, 
did  he  not  remember  that  certain  glass- 


134     TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

blowers  became  consumptive  through  blow- 
ing bottles  ? 

Let  it  pass — it  is  absurd.  He  well  knows 
that  so  the  world  is  made.  An  economist 
would  have  laughed  in  his  face.  Would  he 
become  a  Socialist,  perhaps  ?  There  will  al- 
ways be  rich  and  poor,  as  there  will  always 
be  well-formed  men  and  hunchbacks. 

Besides,  the  fortunates  before  him  were 
not  unjustly  so.  These  were  not  vulgar  fa- 
vorites of  the  Gilded  Calf — parvenus  gross 
and  conceited.  The  nobleman  who  pre- 
sides at  the  table  bears  with  honor  and  dig- 
nity a  name  associated  with  all  the  glories 
of  France ;  the  general  with  the  gray  mus- 
tache is  a  hero,  and  charged  at  Rezonville 
with  the  intrepidity  of  a  Murat ;  the  paint- 
er, the  poet,  have  faithfully  served  Art  and 
Beauty;  the  chemist,  a  self-made  man  who 
began  life  as  a  shop-boy  in  a  drug-store,  and 
to  whom  the  learned  world  listens  to-day  as 
to  an  oracle,  is  simply  a  man  of  genius ; 


AT  TABLE.  135 

these  high-born  dames  are  generous  and 
good,  and  they  will  often  dip  their  fair  hands 
courageously  in  the  depth  of  misfortune. 
Why  should  not  these  members  of  the  Mite 
have  exceptional  enjoyment  ? 

The  Dreamer  said  to  himself  that  he  had 
been  unjust.  These  were  old  sophisms — 
good,  at  the  best,  for  the  clubs  of  the  fau- 
bourgs, which  had  been  awakened  in  his 
memory,  and  by  which  he  had  been  duped. 
Is  it  possible?  He  was  ashamed  of  him- 
self. 

But  the  dinner  neared  its  end ;  and  while 
the  lackeys  refilled  for  the  last  time  the 
champagne-glasses,  the  table  grew  silent — 
the  guests  felt  the  apathy  of  digestion.  The 
Dreamer  looked  at  them,  one  after  the  oth- 
er, and  all  the  faces  had  satiated,  blase  ex- 
pressions which  disturbed  and  disquieted 
him.  A  sentiment,  obscure,  inexplicable,  but 
so  bitter !  protested  even  from  the  depth  of 
his  soul  against  that  repast ;  and  when  they 


136  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

rose  at  last  from  the  table,  he  repeated  soft- 
ly and  stubbornly  to  himself : 

"  Yes  ;  they  are  within  their  rights.  But 
do  they  know,  do  they  understand,  that  their 
luxury  is  made  from  many  miseries  ?  Do 
they  think  of  it  sometimes  ?  Do  they  think 
of  it  as  often  as  they  should  ?  Do  they  think 
of  it?" 


AN    ACCIDENT. 


I. 

SAINT  MEDARD,  the  old  church  of  the  Rue 
Mouffetard,  once  well  known  as  the  scene  of 
the  Convulsionnaires,  is  a  very  poor  parish. 
The  "  Faubourg  Marceau,"  as  they  call  it 
there,  has  not  much  religion,  and  the  vestry- 
board  must  have  hard  work  to  make  both 
ends  meet.  On  Sundays,  at  the  hours  of 
service,  there  are  but  few  there,  and  they  are 


140  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

for  the  most  part  women :  some  twenty  of  the 
folk  of  the  quarter  and  some  servants  in  their 
round  caps.  As  for  the  men,  there  are  not  at 
the  most  more  than  three  or  four — old  men 
in  peasant  jackets,  who  kneel  awkwardly  on 
the  stone  floor,  near  a  pillar,  their  caps  un- 
der their  arms,  rolling  a  great  chaplet  of 
beads  between  their  fingers,  moving  their 
lips,  and  raising  their  eyes  towards  the  arch- 
ed roof,  with  an  air  as  if  they  had  given  the 
stained-glass  windows.  On  week  days,  no- 
body. On  Thursdays,  in  the  winter,  the 
aisles  resounded  for  an  instant  with  the 
clang  of  wooden  shoes,  when  the  students 
of  the  catechism  came  and  went.  Some- 
times a  poor  woman,  leading  one  or  two 
children  and  carrying  a  baby  in  her  arms, 
came  to  burn  a  little  candle  on  the  stand 
at  the  chapel  of  the  Virgin,  or  perhaps  one 
heard  by  the  baptismal  font  the  wailing  of 
a  new-born  babe ;  or,  more  often,  the  funeral 
of  some  poor  wretch :  a  deal  box,  covered 


AN   ACCIDENT.  141 

with  a  black  cloth  and  resting  on  two  tres- 
tles, hastily  blessed  by  the  priest,  before  a 
little  group  of  women,  the  men  being  free- 
thinkers, and  waiting  the  conclusion  of  the 
ceremony  in  the  drinking -shop  across  the 
way,  where  they  played  bagatelle  for  drinks. 
Therefore,  the  old  Abbe'  Faber,  one  of  the 
vicars  of  the  parish,  is  sure  that  twice  out  of 
three  times  he  will  find  no  penitent  before 
his  confessional,  and  has  only  to  hear,  for 
the  most  part  of  the  time,  the  uninteresting 
confession  of  some  good  women.  But  he  is 
conscientious,  and  on  Tuesdays,  Thursdays, 
and  Saturdays,  at  seven  o'clock  precisely, 
he  betakes  himself  regularly  to  the  chapel 
of  St.  John,  only  to  make  a  short  prayer  and 
return  should  there  be  nobody  there. 


II. 

One  day  last  winter,  struggling  against  a 
heavy  wind  with  his  open  umbrella,  the  Abb£ 


142    TEN  TALES  6V  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

Faber  toiled  painfully  up  the  Rue  Mouffe- 
tard,  on  the  way  to  his  parish,  and,  almost 
certain  that  his  toil  was  useless,  he  regretted 
to  himself  the  warm  fire  he  had  just  quitted 
in  his  little  room  in  the  Rue  D'homond,  and 
the  folio  Bollandiste  which  he  had  left  lying 
on  the  table,  with  his  eye-glasses  on  its  open 
pages.  But  it  was  Saturday  night,  the  day 
when  certain  old  widows,  who  earned  their 
scant  income  in  the  neighboring  boarding- 
houses,  sometimes  sought  absolution  for  the 
morrow's  communion.  The  honest  priest 
could  not,  therefore,  excuse  himself  from 
entering  his  oak  box  and  opening,  with  the 
punctuality  of  a  cashier,  that  wicket  where 
the  devotees,  for  whom  the  confessional  is  a 
spiritual  savings  -  bank,  make  a  weekly  de- 
posit of  their  venial  sins. 

The  Abbe  Faber  was  the  more  sorry  to 
go  out,  because  that  particular  Saturday  was 
pay  -  day,  and  on  such  occasions  the  Rue 
Mouffetard  swarmed  with  people,  and  a  peo- 


AN    ACCIDENT.  143 

pie  not  well  disposed  toward  his  cloth.  How- 
ever good  a  man  one  may  be,  it  is  far  from 
agreeable  to  be  forced  to  lower  the  eyes  to 
avoid  malevolent  looks,  and  to  stop  the  ears 
against  insolent  words  heard  in  passing. 
There  was  a  certain  drinking-shop  which  the 
abbe  particularly  dreaded — a  shop  brilliant 
with  gas  and  exhaling  an  odor  of  alcohol 
through  its  open  doors,  through  which  one 
could  see  a  perspective  of  barrels  labelled: 
"Absinthe,"  "Bitter,"  "  Madere,"  "Ver- 
mouth," etc.  Here,  leaning  against  the  bar, 
were  always  a  band  of  loafers  in  long  blouses 
and  high  hats,  who  saluted  the  poor  abbe, 
walking  quickly  along  the  pavement,  with 
ribald  jests. 

However,  on  this  night  the  streets  were 
deserted  on  account  of  the  bad  weather,  and 
the  abbd  reached  his  church  without  inter- 
ruption. He  dipped  his  finger  in  the  holy 
water,  crossed  himself,  made  a  brief  rever- 
ence before  the  grand  altar,  and  went  tow- 


144     TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

ards  his  confessional.     At  least  he  had  not 
come  for  nothing.     A  penitent  was  waiting. 


III. 

A  male  penitent !  a  rare  and  exceptional 
thing  at  Saint  Medard.  But,  distinguishing 
by  the  red  light  of  the  lamp  hanging  from 
the  roof  of  the  chapel  the  short  white  jacket 
and  the  heavy  nailed  shoes  of  the  kneeling 
man,  the  Abbe  Faber  believed  him  to  be 
some  workman  who  had  kept  his  rustic 
faith  and  his  early  habits  of  religious  ob- 
servance. Without  doubt  the  confession  that 
he  was  about  to  hear  would  be  as  stupid  as 
that  of  the  cook  of  the  Rue  Monge,  who,  after 
having  accused  himself  of  petty  thefts,  ex- 
claimed loudly  against  a  single  word  of  res- 
titution. The  priest  even  smiled  to  himself 
as  he  remembered  the  formal  confession  of 
one  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  faubourg,  who 


AN   ACCIDENT.  145 

came  to  ask  for  a  billet  of  confession  that 
he  might  marry.  "  I  have  neither  killed  or 
robbed.  Ask  me  about  the  rest."  And  so 
the  vicar  entered  very  tranquilly  into  his 
confessional,  and,  after  having  taken  a  copi- 
ous pinch  of  snuff,  opened  without  emotion 
the  little  curtain  of  green  serge  which  closed 
the  wicket. 

"  Monsieur  le  curd,"  stammered  a  rough 
voice,  which  was  making  an  effort  to  speak 
low. 

"I  am  not  a  cure",  my  friend.  Say  your 
confiteor,  and  call  me  father." 

The  man,  whose  face  the  abbe"  could  not 
see  among  the  shadows,  stumbled  through 
the  prayer,  which  he  seemed  to  have  great 
difficulty  in  recalling,  and  he  began  again  in 
a  hoarse  whisper : 

"  Monsieur  le  cure — no — my  father — ex- 
cuse me  if  I  do  not  speak  properly,  but  I 
have  not  been  to  confession  for  twenty-five 
years — no,  not  since  I  quitted  the  country — 


146  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

you  know  how  it  is — a  man  in  Paris,  and 
yet  I  have  not  been  worse  than  other  peo- 
ple, and  I  have  said  to  myself,  '  God  must 
be  a  good  sort  of  fellow.'  But  to-day  what 
I  have  on  my  conscience  is  too  heavy  to  car- 
ry alone,  and  you  must  hear  me,  monsieur  le 
curd :  I  have  killed  a  man  !" 

The  abbd  half  rose  from  his  seat.  A  mur- 
derer !  There  was  no  longer  any  question 
of  his  mind  wandering  from  the  duties  of 
his  office,  of  half  annoyance  at  the  garrulity 
of  the  old  women,  to  whom  he  listened  with 
a  half  attentive  ear,  and  whom  he  absolved 
in  all  confidence.  A  murderer !  That  head 
which  was  so  near  his  had  conceived  and 
planned  such  a  crime  !  Those  hands,  crossed 
on  the  confessional,  were  perhaps  still  stained 
with  blood  !  In  his  trouble,  perhaps  not  un- 
mixed with  a  certain  amount  of  fear,  the 
Abbd  Faber  could  only  speak  mechanically. 

"  Confess  yourself,  my  son.  The  mercy  of 
God  is  infinite.'' 


AN   ACCIDENT.  147 

"  Listen  to  my  whole  story,"  said  the  man, 
with  a  voice  trembling  with  profound  grief. 
"  I  am  a  workingman,  and  I  came  to  Paris 
more  than  twenty  years  ago  with  a  fellow- 
countryman,  a  companion  from  childhood. 
We  robbed  birds'-nests,  and  we  learned  to 
read  in  school  together — almost  a  brother, 
sir.  He  was  called  Philip ;  I  am  called  Jack, 
myself.  He  was  a  fine  big  fellow;  I  have  al- 
ways been  heavy  and  ill-formed.  There  was 
never  a  better  workman  than  he — while  I  am 
only  a  'botcher ' — and  so  generous  and  good- 
natured,  wearing  his  heart  on  his  sleeve.  I 
was  proud  to  be  his  friend,  to  walk  by  his 
side — proud  when  he  clapped  me  on  the  back 
and  called  me  a  clumsy  fellow.  I  loved  him 
because  I  admired  him,  in  fact.  Once  here, 
what  an  opportunity  !  We  worked  together 
for  the  same  employer,  but  he  left  me  alone 
in  the  evenings  more  than  half  the  time. 
He  preferred  to  amuse  himself  with  his  com- 
panions—  natural  enough,  at  his  age.  He 


148  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANgOIS  COPPEE. 

loved  pleasure,  he  was  free,  he  had  no  re- 
sponsibilities. All  this  was  impossible  for  me. 
I  was  forced  to  save  my  money,  for  at  that 
time  I  had  an  invalid  mother  in  the  coun- 
try, and  I  sent  her  all  my  savings.  As  for 
me,  I  stayed  at  the  fruiterer's  where  I  lodged, 
and  who  kept  a  lodging-house  for  masons. 
Philip  did  not  dine  there ;  he  used  to  go 
somewhere  else,  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  the 
dinners  were  not  particularly  good.  But  the 
fruiterer  was  a  widow,  far  from  happy,  and  I 
saw  that  my  payments  were  of  help  to  her ; 
and  then,  to  be  frank,  I  fell  at  once  in  love 
with  her  daughter.  Poor  Catherine  !  You 
will  soon  know,  monsieur  le  cure,  what  came 
from  it  all.  I  was  there  three  years  without 
daring  to  tell  her  of  the  love  I  had  for  her. 
I  have  told  you  that  I  am  not  a  good  work- 
man, and  the  little  that  I  gained  hardly  suf- 
ficed for  me  and  for  the  support  of  my 
mother.  There  could  be  no  thought  of 
marrying.  At  last  my  good  mother  left  this 


AN   ACCIDENT.  149 

world  for  a  better.  I  was  somewhat  less 
pressed  for  money,  and  I  began  to  save,  and 
when  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  enough 
to  begin  with,  I  told  Catherine  of  my  love. 
She  said  nothing  at  first — neither  yes  nor 
no.  Well,  I  knew  that  no  one  would  fall 
upon  my  neck;  I  am  not  attractive.  In  the 
mean  time  Catherine  consulted  her  mother, 
who  thought  well  of  me  as  a  steady  work- 
man, as  a  good  fellow,  and  the  marriage  was 
decided  upon.  Ah,  I  had  some  happy  weeks ! 
I  saw  that  Catherine  barely  accepted  me,  and 
that  she  was  by  no  means  carried  away  with 
me ;  but  as  she  had  a  good  heart,  I  hoped 
that  she  would  love  me  some  day — I  would 
make  her  love  me.  As  a  matter  of  course,  I 
told  everything  to  Philip,  whom  I  saw  every 
day  at  the  work-yard,  and  as  Catherine  and 
I  were  engaged,  I  wanted  him  to  meet  her. 
Perhaps  you  have  already  guessed  the  end, 
monsieur  le  cure.  Philip  was  handsome, 
lively,  good-tempered  —  everything  that  I 


150  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

was  not;  and  without  attempting  it,  inno- 
cently enough,  he  fascinated  Catherine.  Ah, 
Catherine  had  a  frank  and  honest  heart,  and 
as  soon  as  she  recognized  what  had  hap- 
pened she  at  once  told  me  everything.  Ah, 


I  can  never  forget  that  moment !  It  was 
Catherine's  birthday,  and  in  honor  of  it  T 
had  bought  a  little  cross  of  gold  which  I  had 
arranged  in  a  box  with  cotton.  We  were 
alone  in  the  back  shop,  and  she  had  just 
brought  me  my  soup.  I  took  my  box  from 


AN   ACCIDENT.  151 

my  pocket,  and,  opening  it,  I   showed  her 
the  jewel.    Then  she  burst  into  tears. 

"'Forgive  me,  Jack/  she  said,  'and  keep 
that  for  her  whom  you  will  marry.  As  for 
me,  I  can  never  become  your  wife.  I  love 
another — I  love  Philip.' 


IV. 

"  Believe  me,  I  had  trouble  enough  then, 
monsieur  le  cure ;  my  soul  was  full  of  it. 
But  what  could  I  do,  since  I  loved  them 
both  ?  Only  what  I  believed  was  for  their 
happiness — let  them  marry.  And  as  Philip 
had  always  lived  freely,  and  spent  as  he 
made,  I  lent  him  my  hoard  to  buy  the  fur- 
niture. 

"  Then  they  were  married,  and  for  a  while 
all  went  well.  They  had  a  little  boy,  and  I 
stood  sponsor  for  him  and  named  him  Ca- 
mille,  in  remembrance  of  his  mother.  It 


152   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANgOIS  COPPEE. 

was  a  little  after  the  birth  of  the  baby  that 
Philip  began  to  go  wrong.  I  was  mistaken 
in  him — he  was  not  made  for  marriage  ;  he 
was  too  fond  of  frivolity  and  pleasure.  You 
live  in  a  poor  quarter,  monsieur  le  curd,  and 
you  must  know  the  sad  story  by  heart — the 
workman  who  glides  little  by  little  from  idle- 
ness into  drunkenness,  who  is  off  on  a  spree 
for  two  or  three  days,  who  does  not  bring 
home  his  week's  wages,  and  who  only  returns 
to  his  home,  broken  up  by  his  spree,  to  make 
scenes  and  to  beat  his  wife.  In  less  than 
two  years  Philip  became  one  of  these  wretch- 
es. At  first  I  tried  to  reform  him,  and  some- 
times, ashamed  of  himself,  he  would  attempt 
to  do  better;  but  that  did  not  last  long. 
Then  my  remonstrances  only  irritated  him ; 
and  when  I  went  to  his  house,  and  he  saw 
me  look  sadly  around  the  chamber  made 
bare  by  the  pawn-shop,  at  poor  Catherine, 
thin  and  pale  with  grief,  he  became  furious. 
One  day  he  had  the  audacity  to  be  jealous 


AN  ACCIDENT.  153 

of  me  on  account  of  his  wife,  who  was  as 
pure  as  the  blessed  Virgin,  reminding  me 
that  I  was  once  her  lover  and  accusing  me 
of  still  being  so,  with  slanders  and  infamies 
that  I  should  be  ashamed  to  repeat.  We 
almost  flew  at  each  other's  throats.  I  saw 
what  I  must  do.  I  would  see  Catherine  and 
my  godson  no  more ;  and  as  for  Philip,  I 
would  only  meet  him  when  by  chance  we 
worked  on  the  same  job. 

"  Only,  you  will  understand,  I  loved  Cath- 
erine and  little  Camille  too  well  to  lose  sight 
of  them  entirely.  On  Saturday  evenings, 
when  I  knew  that  Philip  was  drinking  up  his 
wages  with  his  comrades,  I  used  to  prowl 
about  the  quarter,  and  chat  with  the  boy 
when  I  found  him  ;  and  if  it  was  too  misera- 
ble at  home,  he  did  not  return  with  empty 
hands,  you  know.  I  believe  that  the  wretch- 
ed Philip  knew  that  I  was  helping  his  wife, 
and  that  he  closed  his  eyes  to  the  fact,  find- 
ing it  rather  convenient.  I  will  hurry  on, 


154  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

for  the  story  is  too  miserable.  Some  years 
have  passed ;  Philip  plunging  deeper  in  vice ; 
but  Catherine,  whom  I  had  helped  all  I 
could,  has  educated  her  son,  who  is  now  a 
fellow  of  twenty  years,  good  and  courageous 
like  herself.  He  is  not  a  workman ;  he  is 
educated;  he  has  learned  to  draw  at  the 
evening  schools,  and  he  is  now  with  an  ar- 
chitect, where  he  gets  good  wages.  And 
though  the  house  is  saddened  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  drunkard,  things  go  fairly  well, 
for  Camille  is  a  great  comfort  to  his  mother  ; 
and  for  a  year  or  two,  when  I  see  Catherine 
— she  is  so  changed,  the  poor  woman  ! — lean- 
ing on  the  arm  of  her  manly  son,  it  warms 
my  heart. 

"  But  yesterday  evening,  coming  out  of 
my  cook-shop,  I  met  Camille ;  and  shaking 
hands  with  him — oh,  he  is  not  ashamed  of 
me,  and  he  doesn't  blush  at  a  blouse  covered 
with  plaster — I  saw  that  something  was  the 
matter. 


AN   ACCIDENT.  155 

" '  Let's  see — what's  the  matter  now  ?' 
" '  I  drew  the  lot  yesterday,'  he  replied, 
'  and  I  drew  the  number  ten — a  number  that 
sends  you  to  die  with  fever  in  the  colonies 
with  the  marines.  That  will,  at  all  events, 
send  me  there  for  five  years,  to  leave  moth- 
er alone,  without  resources,  with  father,  who 
has  never  been  drinking  so  much,  who  has 
never  been  so  wicked.  And  it  will  kill  her — 
it  will  kill  her !  How  cursed  it  is  to  be 
poor !' 

"  Oh,  what  a  horrible  night  I  passed ! 
Think  of  it,  monsieur  le  curd,  that  poor 
woman's  labor  for  twenty  years  destroyed 
in  a  minute  by  an  unhappy  chance  ;  because 
a  child,  rummaging  in  a  sack,  has  drawn  an 
unfortunate  number !  In  the  morning  I  was 
broken  as  by  age  when  I  went  to  the  house 
we  were  building  on  the  Boulevard  Arago. 
Of  what  use  is  sorrow?  we  must  work  all 
the  same.  So  I  mounted  the  scaffolding. 
We  had  already  built  the  house  to  the  fourth 


156     TEN    TALES    BY    FRANCOIS    COPPEE. 

story,  and  I  began  to  place  my  mortar.  Sud- 
denly I  felt  some  one  strike  me  on  the  shoul- 
der. It  was  Philip.  He  only  worked  now 
when  the  inclination  seized  him,  and  he  was 
apparently  putting  in  a  day's  work  to  get 
something  to  drink  ;  but  the  builder,  having 
a  forfeit  to  pay  if  the  building  was  not  fin- 
ished by  a  certain  date,  accepted  the  first- 
comers. 


V. 

"I  had  not  seen  Philip  for  a  long  time, 
and  it  was  with  difficulty  that  I  recognized 
him.  Burned  and  fevered  by  brandy,  his 
beard  gray,  his  hands  trembling,  he  was 
more  than  an  old  man — he  was  a  ruin. 

"  '  Well,'  I  said  to  him, '  the  boy  has  drawn 
a  bad  number.' 

" '  What  of  it  ?'  he  replied,  with  an  angry 
look.  'Are  you  going  to  worry  me  about 
that,  too,  like  Catherine  and  Camille  ?  The 


AN  ACCIDENT.  157 

boy  will  do  as  others  have  done :  he  will 
serve  his  country.  I  know  what  worries 
them,  both  my  wife  and  son.  If  I  were  dead 
he  would  not  have  to  go.  But,  so  much  the 
worse  for  them,  I  am  still  solid  at  my  post, 
and  Camille  is  not  the  son  of  a  widow.' 

"The  son  of  a  widow!  Ah,  monsieur  le 
cure,  why  did  he  use  that  unhappy  phrase  ? 
The  evil  thought  came  to  me  at  once,  and  it 
never  quitted  me  all  the  morning  that  I 
worked  at  the  wretch's  side.  I  imagined  all 
that  she  was  about  to  suffer — poor  Catherine ! 
— when  she  no  longer  had  her  son  to  care  for 
and  protect  her,  and  she  must  be  alone  with 
the  miserable  drunkard,  now  completely  bru- 
talized, ugly,  and  capable  of  anything.  A 
neighboring  clock  struck  eleven,  and  the 
workmen  all  descended  to  lunch.  We  re- 
mained until  the  last,  Philip  and  I,  but  in 
stepping  on  the  ladder  to  descend,  he  turned 
to  me  with  a  leer,  and  said,  in  his  hoarse, 
dissipated  voice : 


158  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

"  '  You  see,  steady  as  a  sailor ;  Camille  is 
not  nearly  the  son  of  a  widow.' 

"  The  blood  mounted  to  my  head.  I  was 
beside  myself.  I  seized  with  both  hands 
the  rounds  of  the  ladder  to  which  Philip 
clung  shouting  '  Help !'  and  with  a  single 
effort  I  toppled  it  over. 

"  He  was  instantly  killed — by  an  accident, 
they  said — and  now  Camille  is  the  son  of  a 
widow  and  need  not  go. 

"  That  is  what  I  have  done,  monsieur  le 
cure,  and  what  I  want  to  tell  to  you  and  to 
the  good  God.  I  repent,  I  ask  pardon,  of 
course ;  but  I  must  not  see  Catherine  in  her 
black  dress,  happy  on  the  arm  of  her  son,  or 
I  could  not  regret  my  crime.  To  prevent 
that  I  will  emigrate — I  will  lose  myself  in 
America.  As  to  my  penance — see,  monsieur 
le  cure*,  here  is  the  little  cross  of  gold  that 
Catherine  refused  when  she  told  me  that  she 
was  in  love  with  Philip.  I  have  always  kept 
it,  in  memory  of  the  only  happy  days  that  I 


AN   ACCIDENT. 


159 


ever  knew  in  my  life.     Take  it  and  sell  it. 
Give  the  money  to  the  poor." 

Jack  rose  absolved  by  the  Abbe  Faber. 

One  thing  is  certain,  and  that  is  that  the 
priest  never  sold  the  little  cross  of  gold. 
After  having  paid  its  price  into  the  Treasury 
of  the  Church,  he  hung  the  jewel,  as  an  ex- 
voto,  on  the  altar  of  the  chapel  of  the  Virgin, 
where  he  often  went  to  pray  for  the  poor 
mason. 


THE  SABOTS   OF   LITTLE   WOLFF. 


ONCE  upon  a  time — it  was  so  long  ago  that 
the  whole  world  has  forgotten  the  date — in 
a  city  in  the  north  of  Europe — whose  name 
is  so  difficult  to  pronounce  that  nobody  re- 
members it — once  upon  a  time  there  was  a 
little  boy  of  seven,  named  Wolff,  an  orphan 
in  charge  of  an  old  aunt  who  was  hard  and 
avaricious,  who  only  embraced  him  on  New- 
Year's  Day,  and  who  breathed  a  sigh  of  re- 
gret every  time  that  she  gave  him  a  porrin- 
ger of  soup. 

But  the  poor  little  chap  was  naturally  so 
good  that  he  loved  the  old  woman  just  the 
same,  although  she  frightened  him  very 


164  TEN  TALES  BV  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

much,  and  he  could  never  see  without  trem- 
bling the  great  wart,  ornamented  with  four 
gray  hairs,  which  she  had  on  the  end  of  her 
nose. 

As  the  aunt  of  Wolff  was  known  through 
all  the  village  to  have  a  house  and  an  old 
stocking  full  of  gold,  she  did  not  dare  send 
her  nephew  to  the  school  for  the  poor.  But 
she  so  schemed  to  obtain  a  reduction  of  the 
price  with  the  school-master  whose  school 
little  Wolff  attended,  that  the  bad  teacher, 
vexed  at  having  a  scholar  so  badly  dressed 
and  who  paid  so  poorly,  punished  him  very 
often  and  unjustly  with  the  backboard  and 
fool's  cap,  and  even  stirred  his  fellow-pupils 
against  him,  all  sons  of  well-to-do  men,  who 
made  the  orphan  their  scapegoat. 

The  poor  little  fellow  was  therefore  as 
miserable  as  the  stones  in  the  street,  and  hid 
himself  in  out-of-the-way  corners  to  cry; 
when  Christmas  came. 

The  night  before  Christmas  the  school- 


THE   SABOTS    OF    LITTLE    WOLFF.         165 

master  was  to  take  all  of  his  pupils  to  the 
midnight  mass,  and  bring  them  back  to  their 
homes. 

Now,  as  the  winter  was  very  severe  that 
year,  and  as  for  several  days  a  great  quanti- 
ty of  snow  had  fallen,  the  scholars  came  to 
the  rendezvous  warmly  wrapped  and  bun- 
dled up,  with  fur  caps  pulled  down  over 
their  ears,  double  and  triple  jackets,  knitted 
gloves  and  mittens,  and  good  thick  nailed 
boots  with  strong  soles.  Only  little  Wolff 
came  shivering  in  the  clothes  that  he  wore 
week-days  and  Sundays,  and  with  nothing 
on  his  feet  but  coarse  Strasbourg  socks  and 
heavy  sabots,  or  wooden  shoes. 

His  thoughtless  comrades  made  a  thou- 
sand jests  over  his  sad  looks  and  his  peas- 
ant's dress.  But  the  orphan  was  so  occupied 
in  blowing  on  his  fingers,  and  suffered  so 
much  from  his  chilblains,  that  he  took  no  no- 
tice of  them ;  and  the  troop  of  boys,  with  the 
master  at  their  head,  started  for  the  church. 


1 66   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

It  was  fine  in  the  church,  which  was  re- 
splendent with  wax-candles ;  and  the  schol- 
ars, excited  by  the  pleasant  warmth,  profited 
by  the  noise  of  the  organ  and  the  singing  to 
talk  to  each  other  in  a  low  voice.  They 
boasted  of  the  fine  suppers  that  were  wait- 
ing for  them  at  home.  The  son  of  the 
burgomaster  had  seen,  before  he  went  out, 
a  monstrous  goose  that  the  truffles  marked 
with  black  spots  like  a  leopard.  At  the 
house  of  the  first  citizen  there  was  a  little 
fir-tree  in  a  wooden  box,  from  whose  branch- 
es hung  oranges,  sweetmeats,  and  toys.  And 
the  cook  of  the  first  citizen  had  pinned  be- 
hind her  back  the  two  strings  of  her  cap,  as 
she  only  did  on  her  days  of  inspiration  when 
she  was  sure  of  succeeding  with  her  famous 
sugar-candy.  And  then  the  scholars  spoke, 
too,  of  what  the  Christ-child  would  bring  to 
them,  of  what  he  would  put  in  their  shoes, 
which  they  would,  of  course,  be  very  careful 
to  leave  in  the  chimney  before  going  to  bed. 


THE    SABOTS   OF    LITTLE    WOLFF.         167 

And  the  eyes  of  those  little  chaps,  lively  as 
a  parcel  of  mice,  sparkled  in  advance  with 
the  joy  of  seeing  in  their  imagination  pink 
paper  bags  of  burnt  almonds,  lead  soldiers 
drawn  up  in  battalions  in  their  boxes,  men- 
ageries smelling  of  varnished  wood,  and  mag- 
nificent jumping-jacks  covered  with  purple 
and  bells. 

Little  Wolff  knew  very  well  by  experience 
that  his  old  miserly  aunt  would  send  him 
supperless  to  bed.  But  in  the  simplicity  of 
his  soul,  and  knowing  that  he  had  been  all 
the  year  as  good  and  industrious  as  possi- 
ble, he  hoped  that  the  Christ-child  would  not 
forget  him,  and  he,  too,  looked  eagerly  for- 
ward by-and-by  to  putting  his  wooden  shoes 
in  the  ashes  of  the  fireplace. 

The  midnight  mass  concluded,  the  faith- 
ful went  away,  anxious  for  supper,  and  the 
band  of  scholars,  walking  two  by  two  after 
their  teacher,  left  the  church. 

Now,  under  the  porch,  sitting  on  a  stone 


1 68      TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 


seat  under  a  Gothic  niche,  a  child  was  sleep- 
ing— a  child  covered  by  a  robe  of  white  linen, 
and  whose  feet  were  bare,  notwithstanding 
the  cold.  He  was  not  a  beggar,  for  his  robe 
was  new  and  nice,  and  near  him  on  the 
ground  were  seen,  lying  in  a  cloth,  a  square, 
a  hatchet,  a  pair  of  compasses,  and  the  other 
tools  of  a  carpenter's  apprentice.  Under 
the  light  of  the  stars,  his  face,  with  its  closed 
eyes,  bore  an  expression  of  divine  sweetness, 
and  his  long  locks  of  gold- 
en hair  seemed  like  an  au- 
reole about  his  head.  But 
the  child's  feet,  blue  in 
the  cold  of  that  December 
night,  were  sad  to  see. 

The  scholars,  so  well 
clothed  and  shod  for  the 
winter,  passed  heedlessly 
before  the  unknown  child. 
One  of  them,  even,  the  son 
of  one  of  the  principal 


THE    SABOTS    OF    LITTLE   WOLFF.        169 

men  in  the  village,  looked  at  the  waif  with 
an  expression  in  which  could  be  seen  all  the 
scorn  of  the  rich  for  the  poor,  the  well-fed 
for  the  hungry. 

But  little  Wolff,  coming  the  last  out  of  the 
church,  stopped,  full  of  compassion,  before 
the  beautiful  sleeping  infant. 

"  Alas !"  said  the  orphan  to  himself,  "  it  is 
too  bad  :  this  poor  little  one  going  barefoot 
in  such  bad  weather.  But  what  is  worse  than 
all,  he  has  not  to-night  even  a  boot  or  a  wood- 
en shoe  to  leave  before  him  while  he  sleeps, 
so  that  the  Christ-child  could  put  something 
there  to  comfort  him  in  his  misery." 

And,  carried  away  by  the  goodness  of  his 
heart,  little  Wolff  took  off  the  wooden  shoe 
from  his  right  foot,  and  laid  it  in  front  of 
the  sleeping  child ;  and  then,  as  best  he 
could,  limping  along  on  his  poor  blistered 
foot  and  dragging  his  sock  through  the 
snow,  he  went  back  to  his  aunt's. 

"  Look  at  the  worthless  fellow !"  cried  his 


170  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

aunt,  full  of  anger  at  his  return  without  one 
of  his  shoes.  "What  have  you  done  with 
your  wooden  shoe,  little  wretch  ?" 

Little  Wolff  did  not  know  how  to  deceive, 
and  although  he  was  shaking  with  terror  at 
seeing  the  gray  hairs  bristle  up  on  the  nose 
of  the  angry  woman,  he  tried  to  stammer 
out  some  account  of  his  adventure. 

But  the  old  woman  burst  into  a  frightful 
peal  of  laughter. 

"  Ah,  monsieur  takes  off  his  shoes  for 
beggars  !  Ah,  monsieur  gives  away  his  wood- 
en shoe  to  a  barefoot !  That  is  something 
new  for  example  !  Ah,  well,  since  that  is  so, 
I  am  going  to  put  the  wooden  shoe  which 
you  have  left  in  the  chimney,  and  I  promise 
you  the  Christ-child  will  leave  there  to-night 
something  to  whip  you  with  in  the  morning. 
And  you  shall  pass  the  day  to-morrow  on 
dry  bread  and  water.  We  will  see  if  next 
time  you  give  away  your  shoes  to  the  first 
vagabond  that  comes." 


THE   SABOTS   OF    LITTLE   WOLFF.         171 

And  the  wicked  woman,  after  having  given 
the  poor  boy  a  couple  of  slaps,  made  him 
climb  up  to  his  bed  in  the  attic.  Grieved 
to  the  heart,  the  child  went  to  bed  in  the 
dark,  and  soon  went  to  sleep  on  his  pillow 
steeped  with  tears. 

But  on  the  morrow  morning,  when  the  old 
woman,  awakened  by  the  cold  and  shaken 
by  her  cough,  went  down  stairs — oh,  wonder- 
ful sight ! — she  saw  the  great  chimney  full 
of  beautiful  playthings,  and  sacks  of  mag- 
nificent candies,  and  all  sorts  of  good  things ; 
and  before  all  these  splendid  things  the 
right  shoe,  that  her  nephew  had  given  to  the 
little  waif,  stood  by  the  side  of  the  left  shoe, 
that  she  herself  had  put  there  that  very 
night,  and  where  she  meant  to  put  a  birch- 
rod. 

And  as  little  Wolff,  running  down  to  learn 
the  meaning  of  his  aunt's  exclamation,  stood 
in  artless  ecstasy  before  all  these  splendid 
Christmas  presents,  suddenly  there  were  loud 


172   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

cries  of  laughter  out-of-doors.  The  old 
woman  and  the  little  boy  went  out  to  know 
what  it  all  meant,  and  saw  all  the  neighbors 
gathered  around  the  public  fountain.  What 
had  happened  ?  Oh,  something  very  amus- 
ing and  very  extraordinary.  The  children 
of  all  the  rich  people  of  the  village,  those 
whose  parents  had  wished  to  surprise  them 
by  the  most  beautiful  gifts,  had  found  only 
rods  in  their  shoes. 

Then  the  orphan  and  the  old  woman, 
thinking  of  all  the  beautiful  things  that  were 
in  their  chimney,  were  full  of  amazement. 
But  presently  they  saw  the  cure  coming  with 
wonder  in  his  face.  Above  the  seat,  placed 
near  the  door  of  the  church,  at  the  same 
place  where  in  the  evening  a  child,  clad  in  a 
white  robe,  and  with  feet  bare  notwithstand- 
ing the  cold,  had  rested  his  sleeping  head, 
the  priest  had  just  seen  a  circle  of  gold  in- 
crusted  with  precious  stones. 

And  they  all  crossed  themselves  devoutly, 


THE   SABOTS   OF   LITTLE   WOLFF.        173 

comprehending  that  the  beautiful  sleeping 
child,  near  whom  were  the  carpenter's  tools, 
was  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  person,  become 
for  an  hour  such  as  he  was  when  he  worked 
in  his  parents'  house,  and  they  bowed  them- 
selves before  that  miracle  that  the  good 
God  had  seen  fit  to  work,  to  reward  the 
faith  and  charity  of  a  child. 


THE    FOSTER    SISTER. 


SITTING  in  her  office  at  the  end  of  the 
shop,  shut  off  from  it  by  glass  windows,  pret- 
ty Madame  Bayard,  in  a  black  gown  and 
with  her  hair  in  sober  braids,  was  writing 
steadily  in  an  enormous  ledger  with  leather 
corners,  while  her  husband,  following  his 
morning  custom,  stopped  at  the  door  to 
scold  his  workmen,  who  had  not  finished 
unloading  a  dray  from  the  Northern  Rail- 
way, which  blocked  the  road,  and  carried  to 


178  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 


the  druggist  of  the  Rue 
Vieille  du  Temple  a  doz- 
en casks  of  glucose. 

"  I  have  bad  news  to 
tell   you,"  said   Madame 
Bayard,  sticking  her  pen 
in  a  cup  of  leaden  shot, 
when   her   husband    had 
entered   the   glass    cage. 
"  Poor  Voisin  is  dead." 
"  The  nurse  of  Leon  ?   Poor  woman  !  And 
her  little  daughter  ?" 

"  That  is  the  saddest  part,  my  dear.     A 
relative  of  poor  Voisin  writes  me  that  they 
are  too  poor  to  take  charge  of  the  child,  and 
she  must  be  sent  to  an  orphan  asylum." 
"  Oh,  those  peasants !" 
The  druggist  was  silent  for  a  moment, 
rubbing  his  thick  blond  beard ;  then  sud- 
denly looking  at  his  wife  with  kindly  eyes : 

"  Say,  Mimi,  the  child  is  the  foster  sister 
of  our  Leon.    Suppose  we  give  her  a  home  ?" 


THE    FOSTER    SISTER.  179 

"I  should  think  so,"  was  the  quiet  reply 
of  the.  pretty  wife. 

"  Well  done,"  cried  Bayard,  as,  caring  lit- 
tle if  he  were  seen  by  his  clerks  and  store- 
boys,  he  leaned  towards  his  wife  and  kissed 
her  forehead,  "  well  done !  you're  a  good 
woman,  Mimi.  We  will  take  little  Norine 
with  us,  and  bring  her  up  with  Leon.  That 
won't  ruin  us,  eh  ?  Besides,  I  have  just  made 
a  good  stroke  in  quinine.  We  will  go  after 
the  child  Sunday  to  Argenteuil,  sha'n't  we  ?" 

"We  will  make  that  our  Sunday  excur- 
sion." 


II. 

Good  people,  these  Bayards ;  an  honor  to 
the  drug  trade.  Their  marriage  had  united 
two  houses  which  had  been  for  a  long  time 
rivals ;  for  Bayard  was  the  son  of  The  Sil- 
ver Pill,  founded  by  his  great-great  grandfa- 
ther in  1756  in  the  Rue  Vieille  du  Temple, 


l8o     TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

and  had  espoused  the  daughter  of  the  Offer* 
ing  to  Esculapius,  of  the  Rue  des  Lombards, 
an  establishment  which  dated  from  the  First 
Empire,  as  was  shown  by  the  sign,  copied 
from  the  celebrated  painting  of  Guerin. 
Honest  people,  excellent  people — and  there 
are  many  more,  like  them,  whatever  folks 
may  say,  among  the  older  Paris  houses,  con- 
servators of  old  traditions  ;  going  to  the  sec- 
ond tier,  on  Sunday,  at  the  opera  comique, 
and  ignorant  of  false  weights  and  measures. 
It  was  the  cure  of  Blancs-Manteaux  who  had 
managed  that  marriage  with  his  confrere  of 
Saint- Merry.  The  first  had  ministered  at 
the  death-bed  of  the  elder  Bayard,  and  was 
dismayed  to  see  a  young  man  of  twenty-five 
all  alone  in  a  house  so  gloomy  as  that  of  The 
Silver  Pill,  justly  famed  for  its  ipecac ;  and 
the  second  was  anxious  to  establish  Made- 
moiselle Simonin,  to  whom  he  had  adminis- 
tered her  first  communion,  and  whose  father 
was  one  of  his  most  important  parishioners, 


THE  FOSTER   SISTER.  l8l 

old  Simonin  of  the  Offering  to  Esculafiius, 
celebrated  for  its  camphor.  The  negotia- 
tions were  successful ;  camphor  and  ipecac, 
two  excellent  specialties,  were  united  in  the 
holy  bonds  of  matrimony,  there  was  a  dinner 
and  ball  at  the  Grand  Vefour,  and  now  for 
ten  years,  tranquilly  working  every  day,  sunv 
mer  and  winter,  in  her  glass  cage,  Madame 
Bayard,  with  her  pale  brown  face  and  her 
plaited  hair,  had  smitten  the  hearts  of  all 
the  young  clerks  of  the  quarter  Sainte-Croix 
de  la  Bretonnerie. 

And  yet  for  a  long  time  there  had  been  a 
disappointment  in  that  happy  household,  a 
cloud  in  that  bright  sky.  An  heir  was  want- 
ed, and  it  was  five  years  before  little  Leon 
came  into  the  world.  One  can  imagine  with 
what  joy  he  was  received.  Now  one  day 
they  might  write  over  the  door  of  The  Silver 
Pill  these  words,  "  Bayard  &  Son."  But  as 
the  infant  arrived  at  the  time  of  a  boom  in 
isinglass,  Madame  Bayard,  whose  presence 


1&2     TEN    TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

in  the  shop  was  indispensable,  could  not 
think  of  nursing  him.  She  even  gave  up  the 
idea  of  taking  a  nurse  in  the  house,  fearing 
for  the  new-born  the  close  air  of  that  corner 
of  old  Paris,  and  contented  herself  with  tak- 
ing every  Sunday  with  her  husband  a  little 
excursion  to  Argenteuil  to  see  her  son  with 
his  nurse  Voisin,  who  was  overwhelmed  with 
coffee,  sugar,  soap,  and  other  dainties.  At 
the  end  of  eighteen  months  Mother  Voisin 
brought  back  the  baby  in  a  magnificent 
state,  and  for  two  years  a  child's  nurse, 
chosen  with  great  care,  had  taken  the  child 
out  for  his  airings  in  the  square  of  the  Tour 
Saint-Jacques,  and  had  exhibited  for  the  ad- 
miration of  her  companion-nurses,  the  pout- 
ing lips,  the  high  color,  and  the  dimpled 
back  of  the  future  druggist. 

And  now  these  good  Bayards,  learning  of 
the  death  of  Mother  Voisin,  could  not  bear 
the  thought  that  the  little  girl  who  had  been 
nourished  at  the  same  breast  with  their  boy 


THE    FOSTER   SISTER.  183 

should  be  abandoned  to  public  charity,  so 
they  went  to  Argenteuil  for  Norine. 

Poor  little  one !  Since  the  fifteen  days 
that  her  mother  slept  in  the  cemetery  she  had 
been  taken  charge  of  by  a  cousin  who  kept 
a  billiard-saloon ;  and  though  she  was  not 


yet  five  years  old,  she  had  been  put  to  work 
washing  the  beer-glasses. 

The  Bayards  found  her  charming,  with 
great  eyes  as  blue  as  the  summer  sun,  and 
her  thick  blond  tresses  escaping  from  her 
ugly  black  bonnet.  Leon,  who  had  been 


184     TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

brought  with  his  nurse,  embraced  his  foster 
sister ;  and  the  cousin,  who  that  very  morn- 
ing had  boxed  the  orphan's  ears  for  negli- 
gence in  sweeping  out  the  hall,  appeared 
before  the  Parisians  to  be  as  much  touched 
as  if  parting  with  Norine  was  a  heart-break- 
ing affair. 

The  order  for  an  ample  breakfast  restored 
his  serenity. 

It  was  a  beautiful  Sunday  in  June,  and 
they  were  in  the  country  —  "an  occasion 
which  should  be  improved,"  declared  Bay- 
ard, "by  taking  the  air ;  shouldn't  it,  Mimi?" 

And  while  pretty  Madame  Bayard,  having 
pinned  up  her  skirts,  went  out  with  the  chil- 
dren and  the  nurse  to  pick  flowers  in  a  neigh- 
boring field,  the  druggist,  who  was  less  am- 
bitious, treated  the  saloon  -  keeping  cousin 
to  a  glass  of  vermouth,  seated  at  the  billiard- 
table,  which  was  covered  with  dead  flies. 
They  breakfasted  under  a  vineless  arbor, 
which  the  hot  noonday  sun  riddled  with  its 


THE    FOSTER   SISTER. 


'85 


rays.  But  what  of  that  ?  They  were  pleased 
and  contented  all  the  same.  Madame  Bay- 
ard had  hung  her  hat  on  the  lattice ;  and 
her  husband,  wearing  a  bargeman's  straw 
helmet,  which  had  been  lent  to  him  by  the 
saloon-keeper,  cut  up  the  duck  in  the  best 
of  spirits.  Little  Leon  and  Norine,  who 
had  immediately  become  the  best  of  friends, 
emptied  the  salad-bowl  of  its  cream-cheese. 
Then  they  all  romped  in  the  grass,  went 
boating  on  the  stream,  and,  intoxicated  with 
the  fresh  country  air,  the 
indwellers  of  the  city, 
coming  from  the  close 
Paris  streets,  pushed  to 
its  fullest  extreme  this 
idyl  in  the  fashion  of 
Paul  de  Kock. 

For,  yes ;  there  was  a 
moment,  as  they  came 
back  in  the  boat,  in  a 
delicious  sunset,  when 


l86   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

tinted  clouds  floated  in  a  glowing  sky,  when 
Madame  Bayard — the  serious  Madame  Bay- 
ard— whose  frown  turned  to  stone  the  shop- 
boys  of  the  druggist,  sang  the  air  called 
"  To  the  Shores  of  France,"  to  the  rhythmic 
fall  of  the  oars,  plied  by  her  husband  in  his 
shirt-sleeves.  They  dined  in  the  arbor  where 
they  had  breakfasted,  but  the  second  repast 
was  a  shade  less  happy.  The  night-moths, 
which  dashed  in  to  burn  themselves  at  the 
candles,  frightened  the  children ;  and  Ma- 
dame Bayard  was  so  tired  that  she  could 
not  even  guess  the  simple  rebus  on  her  des- 
sert napkin. 

Never  mind  ;  it  has  been  a  good  day;  and 
on  their  return  in  a  first-class  carriage — this 
was  not  a  time  for  petty  economies  —  Ma- 
dame Bayard,  with  her  head  on  her  hus- 
band's shoulder,  watching  Leon  and  Norine, 
limp  with  sleep  on  the  lap  of  the  nurse,  half 
asleep  herself,  murmured  to  her  husband,  in 
a  happy  voice : 


THE  FOSTER  SISTER.  187 

"  See,  Ferdinand ;  we  have  done  well  to 
take  the  little  one.  She  will  be  a  comrade 
for  Leon.  They  will  be  like  brother  and 
sister." 

III. 

In  fact,  they  did  thus  grow  up  together. 

They  were  most  kind-hearted  people,  these 
Bayards.  They  made  no  difference  between 
the  humble  orphan  and  their  own  dear  boy, 
who  would  one  day  in  the  firm  of  "  Bayard 
&  Son "  work  monopolies  in  rhubarb  and 
corners  in  castor-oil ;  indeed,  they  loved  as 
their  own  child  little  Norine,  who  was  as  in- 
telligent as  she  was  charming,  as  fair  in  mind 
as  she  was  delicate  in  body. 

Now  the  nurse  took  the  two  children  to 
the  square  of  the  Tour  Saint-Jacques  when 
the  weather  was  pleasant,  and  in  the  even- 
ing at  the  family  table  there  were  two  high- 
chairs  side  by  side  for  the  boy  and  his  fos- 
ter sister. 


i88    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

In  addition  to  which,  the  Bayards  were 
not  slow  to  perceive  the  good  influence  which 
Norine  had  upon  Leon.  Quicker,  of  a  more 
nervous  temperament,  more  easy  of  compre- 
hension than  the  lymphatic  boy,  whose  wits 
were  "wool-gathering,"  according  to  his  fa- 
ther, she  seemed  to  communicate  to  him 
something  of  her  own  spirit  and  fire.  "  She 
jogs  him  up,"  said  Madame  Bayard. 

And  since  he  had  lived  with  his  foster 
sister  Leon  had  perceptibly  grown  brighter 
and  quicker.  When  they  were  of  an  age  to 
learn  to  read,  Leon,  who  made  but  little 
progress,  and  stumbled  along  with  one  of 
those  alphabets  with  pictures  where  the  let- 
ter E  is  by  the  side  of  an  elephant  and  the 
letter  Z  by  the  side  of  a  zouave,  was  the  de- 
spair of  his  mother.  But  as  soon  as  Norine, 
who  in  a  very  short  time  learned  to  spell 
and  read,  came  to  the  aid  of  the  little  man, 
he  immediately  made  rapid  progress. 

So  things  went  on,  until  both  children 


were  sent  to  a  school  for  little  children  kept 
by  a  gentlewoman  named  Merlin,  in  the  Rue 
de  1'Homme  Arme*.  According  to  the  falla- 
cious circular  which  Mademoiselle  Merlin 
sent  to  the  folks  of  the  quarter,  there  was  a 
garden — that  is  to  say,  four  broomsticks  in 


190     TEN   TALES   BY   FRANQOIS   COPPfiE. 

a  sandy  court;  and  it  was  there,  the  first 
day  during  recess,  that  the  innocent  Leon 
burst  into  cries  of  terror  when  he  saw  the 
school-mistress,  forced  by  some  accident  to 
interrupt  her  knitting,  stick  one  of  her  great 
knitting-needles  in  her  capacious  head-dress. 
A  "  senior,"  who  was  more  familiar  with  her 
head-dress,  explained  the  phenomenon  in 
vain  to  Leon  and  Norine,  for  the  boy,  none 
the  less,  preserved  in  the  presence  of  Mad- 
emoiselle Merlin  an  impression  of  supersti- 
tious terror. 

She  would  have  paralyzed  his  infant  facul- 
ties, and  have  prevented  him  in  the  class 
from  following  the  pointer  of  Mademoiselle 
Merlin,  as  she  sniffled  through  her  sing-song 
lecture  before  the  map  of  Europe,  or  the 
table  of  weights  and  measures,  if  Norine 
had  not  been  there  to  reassure  and  encour- 
age him.  She  was  at  once  the  first  scholar 
in  the  school,  and  became  for  slow  and  lazy 
Leon  a  sort  of  sisterly  counsellor  and  affec- 


THE    FOSTER   SISTER.  IQI 

tionate  under-teacher.  Towards  four  o'clock 
Madame  Bayard  had  the  two  children,  whom 
the  nurse  had  brought  back  to  the  store, 
placed  near  her  in  the  glass  office ;  and  No- 
rine,  opening  a  copy-book  or  a  book,  ex- 
plained to  Leon  the  uncomprehended  task 
or  made  him  repeat  the  lesson  that  he  had 
not  understood. 

"  The  good  God  has  rewarded  us,"  Ma- 
dame Bayard  sometimes  whispered  to  her 
husband  in  the  evening.  "That  little  No- 
rine  is  a  treasure,  and  so  good,  so  industri- 
ous !  Only  to-day  I  listened  to  her  helping 
Leon  again.  I  believe  that  without  her  he 
would  never  have  learned  the  multiplica- 
tion-table." 

"  I  believe  you,  Mimi,"  responded  Bayard. 
"  I  have  observed  it.  Things  go  on  marvel- 
lously well  with  us,  and  we  will  portion  her 
and  marry  her,  shall  we  not,  when  she  comes 
to  a  suitable  age  ?" 


IQ2   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANCOIS  COPPEE. 

IV. 

Age  comes — ah,  how  fast  age  comes !  And 
behold !  now  in  the  glass  cage  of  the  shop 
there  is  a  slender  and  beautiful  young  girl 
sitting  at  the  side  of  Madame  Bayard,  who 
already  shows  some  silver  threads  in  her 
black  bands.  It  is  Norine  now  who  writes 
in  the  great  ledger  with  leather  corners,  while 
her  adopted  mother  plies  her  needles  on 
some  embroidery. 

Seven  o'clock !  Time  that  they  came 
home,  and  the  shop  must  be  closed  against 
the  November  wind  which  is  twisting  and 
turning  the  flames  of  the  gas-jets. 

Look  at  them  now :  Bayard  grown  stout, 
portly,  and  covered  with  trinkets,  while  Leon, 
who  has  just  entered  the  first  class  in  phar- 
macy, has  actually  become  a  fine -looking 
young  fellow. 

"  Good-day,  Mimi ;  good-day,  Norine !  Let 
us  go  right  in  to  dinner.  I  will  tell  you  all 


THE    FOSTER   SISTER.  193 

the  news  while  we  are  eating  the  soup,"  said 
the  druggist. 

They  went  up  to  the  dining-room,  and 
while  Madame  Bayard,  sitting  under  a  ba- 
rometer in  the  shape  of  a  lyre,  served  the 
thick  soup,  Bayard,  tucking  his  napkin  in  his 
vest  and  regarding  his  wife  with  a  knowing 
look,  said, 

"  You  know  it  is  all  right." 

"  The  Forgets  agree  ?'* 

"Exactly;  and  Leon  will  espouse  Hortense 
in  six  months,  and  our  daughter-in-law  will 
come  and  live  with  us.  Yes,  Norine,  you 
have  known  nothing  about  it,  because  one 
does  not  speak  of  such  things  before  young 
girls;  but  for  more  than  a  year  Leon  has 
been  in  love  with  Hortense  Forget,  and  has 
been  teasing  us  to  arrange  the  marriage — 
not  such  a  difficult  thing  after  all,  since  it 
only  required  a  word.  Leon  is  a  good  catch. 
The  only  difficulty  was  that  we  wanted  to 
keep  our  son  with  us.  At  last  it  is  all  ar- 


194     TEN   TALES    BY    FRANQOIS   COPPEE. 

ranged,  and  your  foster  brother  will  have  the 
wife  he  wants.  I  hope  you  are  pleased." 

"Very  much  pleased,"  replied  Norine. 

Oh,  deaf  and  blind !  They  never  heard  the 
voice  of  Norine  when  she  replied  to  them — 
that  low,  pathetic  tone,  which  is  the  echo  of 
a  broken  heart.  Nor  did  they  see  how  pale 
she  became,  and  that  her  head,  suddenly 
grown  heavy,  swayed  from  side  to  side  as  if 
Norine  were  about  to  faint.  They  saw  noth- 
ing, comprehended  nothing ;  and  for  a  long 
time  they  had  seen  and  comprehended  noth- 
ing. Yet  they  dearly  loved  this  Norine,  who 
was  the  grace,  the  charm  of  the  house.  They 
dreamed,  these  good  people,  of  marrying  her 
one  of  these  days  to  their  head-clerk,  a  wid- 
ower of  prudent  and  economical  habits,  and 
"all  that  is  necessary  to  make  a  woman  hap- 
py." Leon  loved  her,  too,  with  all  his  heart; 
but  as  a  dear,  good  sister.  Nor  did  the  great 
spoiled  boy  suspect  that  Norine  loved  him, 
and  suffered  from  her  love— aye,  to  death 


THE   FOSTER  SISTER.  195 

itself.  No ;  even  that  evening,  when  they  had 
unconsciously  inflicted  upon  her  the  worst 
of  torture,  they  never  suspected  the  truth; 
and  they  would  sleep  peacefully,  indulging 
in  beautiful  dreams  of  the  future,  at  the  very 
hour  when,  shut  in  her  chamber — the  cham- 
ber separated  by  such  a  thin  partition  from 
that  of  her  adopted  parents — Norine  would 
fall  upon  her  bed,  fainting  with  grief,  and 
bury  her  head  in  her  pillow  to  stifle  her 
sobs. 


V. 

The  ball  is  finished ;  and  in  the  empty 
rooms  the  candles,  burned  to  the  very  end, 
have  broken  some  of  the  sconces  and  the 
fragments  lie  upon  the  waxed  floors. 

The  Bayards  have  insisted  that  the  wed- 
ding should  be  celebrated  at  their  house; 
but  by  the  aid  of  many  flowers  (it  is  mid- 
summer) they  have  given  a  holiday  appear- 


196     TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQO1S    COPPEE. 

ance  to  the  apartment  in  the  Rue  Vieille  du 
Temple  where  they  have  triumphantly  in- 
stalled their  daughter-in-law. 

At  last  it  is  finished ;  the  young  couple 
have  retired  to  their  nuptial  chamber,  where 
Madame  Bayard  has  gone  for  a  moment 
with  them.  Coming  out  she  found  Norine 
still  in  the  little  salon,  helping  the  servants 
extinguish  the  lights.  She  embraced  the 
young  girl  tenderly,  saying, 

"  Go  to  bed,  my  child.  You  must  be  very 
tired."  And  she  added,  with  a  smile,  "Well, 
it  will  be  your  turn  before  long." 

And  Norine  was  at  last  alone  in  the  room, 
now  so  gloomy,  and  lighted  only  by  her  sin- 
gle candle  resting  on  the  piano. 

Heavens !  how  heavy  was  the  odor  of  the 
flowers,  and  how  her  head  ached. 

Ah,  that  horrible  day !  What  torment  she 
had  endured  since  the  moment  when  she 
knelt,  impressed  into  service  as  a  lady's- 
maid,  with  pins  in  her  lips,  at  the  feet  of 


THE    FOSTER   SISTER. 


197 


her  rival  Hortense,  and  ar- 
ranged her  white  satin  train, 
to  the  hour  when  Leon, 
holding  his  wife  by  the 
waist,  drew  her  towards  her, 
Norine,  and  the  lips  of  the 
young  couple  met  almost 
upon  her  very  forehead  ! 

Oh,  the  odor  of  the  flow- 
ers is  insupportable,  and  she 
is  so  giddy  and  faint. 

She  fell  upon  a  sofa,  un- 
nerved by  a  frightful  head- 
ache, her  head  thrown  back,  clasping  her 
forehead  with  her  two  hands,  but  with  open 
eyes  staring  always  at  the  door — the  door 
of  that  chamber  which  was  shut  upon  the 
young  couple,  closed  upon  the  mystery  which 
was  breaking  her  heart.  A  sort  of  delirium 
overwhelmed  her.  How  the  heavy  perfume 
of  those  flowers  overpowered  her,  and  how 
a  thousand  memories  assailed  her  at  once. 


198     TEN    TALES    BY    FRANgOIS    COPPEE. 

She  was  a  child  again  in  the  saloon  at  Ar- 
genteuil,  and  the  kind  Parisians  came  and 
caressed  her.  She  was  embraced  by  the 
dear  little  boy  wearing  a  white  plume  in  his 
hat.  Rapid  pictures  flashed  upon  her  soul. 
The  pension  of  the  Rue  de  1'Homme  Arme, 
and  Mademoiselle  Merlin,  with  her  knitting- 
needle  stuck  in  her  head-dress,  pointed  with 
the  end  of  her  stick  to  the  table  of  weights 
and  measures.  The  drug-store  on  Sundays, 
all  dark,  the  shutters  closed,  and  she  playing 
catch  with  Leon  among  the  barrels  and  sacks. 
Good  God !  was  she  losing  her  head  ?  She 
could  not  help  humming  that  waltz,  during 
which  Leon  once  held  her  in  his  arms.  She 
was  stifled.  Oh,  the  flowers !  She  must  go 
out,  or  at  least  open  a  window.  But  she 
could  not  rise ;  her  strength  had  deserted 
her.  Could  she  die  thus  ?  Two  iron  fingers 
seemed  to  be  pressing  her  temples.  Oh,  the 
roses  and  the  orange-flowers — those  orange- 
flowers  above  all  I 


THE    FOSTER    SISTER.  199 

At  last  she  made  a  great  effort.  She  rose 
upright  and  pale — pale  as  her  white  robe. 
But  suddenly  her  strength  left  her,  and  fall- 
ing first  upon  her  knees,  and  then  with  her 
head  and  shoulders  upon  the  wood  floor, 
poor  Norine  lay  stretched  at  the  threshold 
of  the  bridal  chamber,  killed  by  disappointed 
love  and  by  the  flowers. 


1WY    FRIEND    MEURTR1ER. 


I. 

I  WAS  at  one  time  employed  in  a  govern- 
ment office.  Every  day  from  ten  o'clock 
until  four  I  became  a  voluntary  prisoner 
in  a  depressing  office,  adorned  with  yellow 
pasteboard  boxes,  and  filled  with  the  musty 
odor  of  old  papers.  There  I  lunched  on 
Italian  cheese  and  apples  which  I  roasted 
at  the  grate.  I  read  the  morning  papers, 
even  to  the  advertisements ;  I  rhymed  verses, 
and  I  attended  to  the  affairs  of  state  to  the 
extent  of  drawing  at  the  end  of  each  month 


204  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

a  salary  which  barely  kept  me  from  starv- 
ing. 

I  recall  to-day  one  of  my  companions  in 
captivity  at  that  epoch. 

He  was  called  Achille  Meurtrier,  and  cer- 
tainly his  fierce  look  and  tall  form  seemed 
to  warrant  that  name.  He  was  a  great  big 
fellow,  about  forty  years  old,  not  too  much 
chest  or  shoulders,  but  who  increased  his 
apparent  size  by  wearing  felt  hats  with  wide 
brims,  ample  and  short  coats,  large  plaid 
trousers,  and  neckties  of  a  sanguine  red  un- 
der rolling  collars.  He  wore  a  full  beard, 
long  hair,  and  was  very  proud  of  his  hairy 
hands. 

The  chief  boast  of  Meurtrier,  otherwise 
the  best  and  most  amiable  of  companions, 
was  to  trifle  with  an  athletic  constitution,  to 
possess  the  biceps  of  a  prize-fighter,  and,  as 
he  said  himself,  not  to  know  his  own  strength. 
He  never  made  a  gesture,  even  in  the  exer- 
cise of  his  peaceful  profession,  that  did  not 


MY    FRIEND    MEURTRIER.  205 

have  for  its  object  to  convince  the  spectators 
of  his  prodigious  vigor.  Did  he  have  to 
take  from  its  case  a  half-empty  pasteboard 
box,  he  advanced  towards  the  shelf  with  the 
heavy  step  of  a  street  porter,  grasped  the 
box  solidly  with  a  tight  hand,  and  carried  it 
with  a  stiff  arm  as  far  as  the  next  table,  with 
a  shrugging  of  shoulders  and  frowning  of 
brow  worthy  of  Milo  of  Crotona.  He  car- 
ried this  manner  so  far  that  he  never  used 
less  apparent  effort  even  to  lift  the  lightest 
objects,  and  one  day  when  he  held  in  his 
right  hand  a  basket  of  old  papers  I  saw  him 
extend  his  left  arm  horizontally  as  if  to  make 
a  counterpoise  to  the  tremendous  weight. 

I  ought  to  say  that  this  robust  creature 
inspired  me  with  a  profound  respect,  for  I 
was  then,  even  more  than  to-day,  physically 
weak  and  delicate,  and  in  consequence  filled 
with  admiration  for  that  energetic  physique 
which  I  lacked. 

The  conversations  of  Meurtrier  were  not 


2o6    TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

of  a  nature  to  diminish  the  admiration  with 
which  he  inspired  me. 

In  the  summer,  above  all,  on  Monday 
mornings,  when  we  had  returned  to  the  office 
after  our  Sunday  holiday,  he  had  an  inex- 
haustible fund  of  stories  concerning  his  ad- 
ventures and  feats  of  strength.  After  taking 
off  his  felt-hat,  his  coat,  and  his  vest,  and 
wiping  the  perspiration  from  his  forehead 
with  the  sleeve  of  his  shirt,  to  indicate  his 
sanguine  and  ardent  temperament,  he  would 
thrust  his  hands  deep  in  the  pockets  of  his 
trousers,  and,  standing  near  me  in  an  atti- 
tude of  perpendicular  solidity,  begin  a  mono- 
logue something  as  follows : 

"  What  a  Sunday,  my  boy !  Positively  no 
fatigue  can  lay  me  up.  Think  of  it :  yester- 
day was  the  regatta  at  Joinville-le-Pont ;  at 
six  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  rendezvous  at 
Bercy,  at  The  Mariners,  for  the  crew  of  the 
Marsouin;  the  sun  is  up;  a  glass  of  white  wine 
and  we  jump  into  our  rowing  suits,  seize  an 


MY   FRIEND   MEURTRIER.  207 

oar  and  give  way — one-two,  one-two — as  far 
as  Joinville ;  then  overboard  for  a  swim  be- 
fore breakfast — strip  to  swimming  drawers,  a 
jump  overboard,  and  look  out  for  squalls. 
After  my  bath  I  have  the  appetite  of  a  tiger. 
Good !  I  seize  the  boat  by  one  hand  and  I 
call  out, '  Charpentier,  pass  me  a  small  ham.' 
Three  motions  in  one  time  and  I  have  fin- 
ished it  to  the  bone.  'Charpentier,  pass 
me  the  brandy-flask.'  Three  swallows  and 
it  is  empty." 

So  the  description  would  con- 
tinue—dazzling, Homeric. 

"  It  is  the  hour  for  the  regatta 
— noon — the  sun  just  overhead. 
The  boats  draw  up  in  line  on 
the  sparkling  river,  before  a  tent 
gaudy  with  streamers.  On  the 
bank  the  mayor  with  his  staff 
of  office,  gendarmes  in  yellow 
shoulder-belts,  and  a  swarm  of 
summer  dresses,  open  parasols, 


2O8   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

and  straw  hats.  Bang!  the  signal- gun  is 
fired.  The  Marsouin  shoots  ahead  of  all 
her  competitors  and  easily  gains  the  prize 
— and  no  fatigue !  We  go  around  Marne, 
and,  returning,  dine  at  Creteil.  How  cool 
the  evening  in  the  dusky  arbor,  where  pipes 
glow  through  the  darkness,  and  moths  singe 
their  wings  in  the  flame  of  the  omelette  ail 
kirsch.  At  the  end  of  a  dessert,  served  on 
decorated  plates,  we  hear  from  the  ball-room 
the  call  of  the  cornet — '  Take  places  for  the 
quadrille  !'  But  already  a  rival  crew,  beaten 
that  same  morning,  has  monopolized  the 
prettiest  girls.  A  fight ! — teeth  broken,  eyes 
blackened,  ugly  falls,  and  whacks  below  the 
belt ;  in  a  word,  a  poem  of  physical  enthu- 
siasm, of  noisy  hilarity,  of  animal  spirits, 
without  speaking  of  the  return  at  midnight, 
through  crowded  stations,  with  girls  whom 
we  lift  into  the  cars,  friends  separated  call- 
ing from  one  end  of  the  train  to  the  other, 
and  fellows  playing  a  horn  upon  the  roof." 


MY   FRIEND    MEURTRIER.  209 

And  the  evenings  of  my  astonishing  com- 
panion were  not  less  full  of  adventure  than 
his  Sundays.  Collar- and -elbow  wrestling 
in  a  tent,  under  the  red  light  of  torches,  be- 
tween him — simple  amateur — and  Du  Bois, 
the  iron  man,  in  person ;  rat  -  chases  near 
the  mouths  of  sewers,  with  dogs  as  fierce  as 
tigers  ;  sanguinary  encounters  at  night,  in 
the  most  dangerous  quarters,  with  ruffians 
and  nose-eaters,  were  the  most  insignificant 
episodes  of  his  nightly  career.  Nor  do  I 
dare  relate  other  adventures  of  a  more  in- 
timate character,  from  which,  as  the  writ- 
ers of  an  earlier  day  would  say  in  noble 
style,  a  pen  the  least  timorous  would  recoil 
with  horror. 

However  painful  it  may  be  to  confess  an 
unworthy  sentiment,  I  am  obliged  to  say 
that  my  admiration  for  Meurtrier  was  not 
unmixed  with  regret  and  bitterness.  Per- 
haps there  was  mingled  with  it  something 
of  envy.  But  the  recitation  of  his  most  mar- 


210  TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

vellous  exploits  had  never  awakened  in  me 
the  least  feeling  of  incredulity,  and  Achille 
Meurtrier  easily  took  his  place  in  my  mind 
among  heroes  and  demigods,  between  Ro- 
land and  Pirithous. 


II. 

At  this  time  I  was  a  great  wanderer  in 
the  suburbs,  and  I  occupied  the  leisure  of 
my  summer  evenings  by  solitary  walks  in 
those  distant  regions,  as  unknown  to  the 
Parisians  of  the  boulevards  as  the  country 
of  the  Caribbees,  and  of  whose  sombre 
charm  I  endeavored  later  to  tell  in  verse. 

One  evening  in  July,  hot  and  dusty,  at  the 
hour  when  the  first  gas-lights  were  beginning 
to  twinkle  in  the  misty  twilight,  I  was  walk- 
ing slowly  from  Vaugirard  through  one  of 
those  long  and  depressing  suburban  streets 
lined  on  each  side  by  houses  of  unequal 
height,  whose  porters  and  porteresses,  in 


MY   FRIEND    MEURTRIER.  211 

shirt  sleeves  and  in  calico,  sat  on  the  steps 
and  imagined  that  they  were  taking  the  fresh 
air.  Hardly  any  one  passing  in  the  whole 
street ;  perhaps,  from  end  to  end,  a  mason, 
white  with  plaster,  a  sergeant-de-ville,  a  child 
carrying  home  a  four-pound  loaf  larger  than 
himself,  or  a  young  girl  hurrying  on  in  hat 
and  cloak,  with  a  leather  bag  on  her  arm ; 
and  every  quarter-hour  the  half-empty  om- 
nibus coming  back  to  its  place  of  departure 
with  the  heavy  trot  of  its  tired  horses. 

Stumbling  now  and  then  on  the  pavement 
— for  asphalt  is  an  unknown  luxury  in  these 
places — I  went  down  the  street,  tasting  all 
the  delights  of  a  stroller.  Sometimes  I  stop- 
ped before  a  vacant  lot  to  watch,  through 
the  broken  boards  of  the  fence,  the  fading 
glories  of  the  setting  sun  and  the  black  sil- 
houettes of  the  chimneys  thrown  against  a 
greenish  sky.  Sometimes,  through  an  open 
window  on  the  ground-floor,  I  caught  sight 
pf  an  interior,  picturesque  and  familiar :  here 


212      TEN   TALES    BY   FRANQOIS    COPPEE. 

a  jolly-looking  laundress  holding  her  flat-iron 
to  her  cheek;  there  workmen  sitting  at  ta- 
bles and  smoking  in  the  basement  of  a  cab- 
aret, while  an  old  Bohemian  with  long  gray 
hair,  standing  before  them,  sang  something 
about  "  Liberty,"  accompanying  himself  on 
a  guitar  about  the  color  of  bouillon — the 
scenes  of  Chardin  and  Van  Ostade. 

Suddenly  I  stopped. 

One  of  these  personal  pictures  had  caught 
my  eye  by  its  domestic  and  charming  sim- 
plicity. 

She  looked  so  happy  and  peaceful  in  her 
quiet  little  room,  the  dear  old  lady  in  her 
black  gown  and  widow's  cap,  leaning  back 
in  an  easy-chair  covered  with  green  Utrecht 
velvet,  and  sitting  quietly  with  her  hands 
folded  on  her  lap.  Everything  around  her 
was  so  old  and  simple,  and  seemed  to  have 
been  preserved,  less  through  a  wise  economy 
than  on  account  of  hallowed  memories,  since 
the  honey-moon  with  monsieur  of  the  high 


MY    FRIEND   MEURTRIER.  213 

complexion,  in  a  frock  -  coat  and  flowered 
waistcoat,  whose  oval  crayon  ornamented 
the  wall.  By  two  lamps  on  the  mantle-shelf 
every  detail  of  the  old-fashioned  furniture 


could  be  distinguished,  from  the  clock  on  a 
fish  of  artificial  and  painted  marble  to  the 
old  and  antiquated  piano,  on  which,  without 
doubt,  as  a  young  girl,  in  leg-of-mutton  sleeves 
and  with  hair  dressed  a  la  Greeqiie,  she  had 
played  the  airs  of  Romagnesi. 


214   TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 

Certainly  a  loved  and  only  daughter,  re- 
maining unmarried  through  her  affection  for 
her  mother,  piously  watched  over  the  last 
years  of  the  widow.  It  was  she,  I  was  sure, 
who  had  so  tenderly  placed  her  dear  moth- 
er ;  she  who  had  put  the  ottoman  under  her 
feet,  she  who  had  put  near  her  the  inlaid  ta- 
ble, and  arranged  on  it  the  waiter  and  two 
cups.  I  expected  already  to  see  her  coming 
in  carrying  the  evening  coffee  —  the  sweet, 
calm  girl,  who  should  be  dressed  in  mourning 
like  the  widow,  and  resemble  her  very  much. 

Absorbed  by  the  contemplation  of  a  scene 
so  sympathetic,  and  by  the  pleasure  of  imag- 
ining that  humble  poem,  I  remained  stand- 
ing some  steps  from  the  open  window,  sure 
of  not  being  noticed  in  the  dusky  street, 
when  I  saw  a  door  open  and  there  appeared 
— oh,  how  far  he  was  from  my  thoughts  at 
that  moment — my  friend  Meurtrier  himself, 
the  formidable  hero  of  tilts  on  the  river  and 
frays  in  unknown  places. 


MY   FRIEND    MEURTRIER.  215 

A  sudden  doubt  crossed  me.  I  felt  that 
I  was  on  the  point  of  discovering  a  mystery. 

It  was  indeed  he.  His  terrible  hairy 
hand  held  a  tiny  silver  coffee- pot,  and  he 
was  followed  by  a  poodle  which  greatly  em- 
barrassed his  steps — a  valiant  and  classic 
poodle,  the  poodle  of  blind  clarionet-players, 
a  poor  beggar's  poodle,  a  poodle  clipped  like 
a  lion,  with  hairy  ruffles  on  his  four  paws, 
and  a  white  mustache  like  a  general  of  the 
Gymnase. 

"  Mamma,"  said  the  giant,  in  a  tone  of  in- 
effable tenderness,  "here  is  your  coffee.  I 
am  sure  that  you  will  find  it  nice  to-night. 
The  water  was  boiling  well,  and  I  poured  it 
on  drop  by  drop." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  old  lady,  rolling 
her  easy- chair  to  the  table  with  an  air; 
"thank  you,  my  little  Achille.  Your  dear 
father  said  many  a  time  that  there  was  not 
my  equal  at  making  coffee — he  was  so  kind 
and  indulgent,  the  dear,  good  man  —  but  I 


2l6  T,EN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPEE. 


begin  to  believe  that  you  are  even  better 
than  I." 

At  that  moment,  and  while  Meurtrier  was 
pouring  out  the  coffee  with  all  the  delicacy 
of  a  young  girl,  the  poodle,  excited  no  doubt 
by  the  uncovered  sugar,  placed  his  forepaws 
on  the  lap  of  his  mistress. 

"  Down,  Medor,"  she  cried,  with  a  benevo- 
lent indignation,  "  Did  any  one  ever  see 
such  a  troublesome  animal  ?  Look  here, 

sir  !  you  know  very  well  that 
<^v 
._  -  \'  your  master  never  fails  to  give 

you  the  last  of  his  cup.  By- 
the-way,"  added  the  widow, 
addressing  her  son,  "you  have 
taken  the  poor  fellow  out,  have 
you  not  ?" 

"  Certainly,  mamma,"  he  re- 
plied, in  a  tone  that  was  almost  infantile. 
"  I  have  just  been  to  the  creamery  for  your 
morning  milk,  and  I  put  the  leash  and  col- 
lar on  Mddor  and  took  him  with  me." 


MY    FRIEND    MEURTRIER.  217 

''And  he  has  attended  to  all  his  little 
wants?" 

"  Don't  be  disturbed.  He  doesn't  want 
anything." 

Reassured  on  this  point,  important  to  ca- 
nine hygiene,  the  good  dame  drank  her  cof- 
fee, between  her  son  and  her  dog,  who  each 
regarded  her  with  an  inexpressible  tender- 
ness. 

It  was  assuredly  unnecessary  to  see  or 
hear  more.  I  had  already  descried  what  a 
peaceful  family  life — upright,  pure,  and  de- 
voted— my  friend  Meurtrier  hid  under  his 
chimerical  gasconades.  But  the  spectacle 
with  which  chance  had  favored  me  was  at 
once  so  droll  and  so  touching  that  I  could 
not  resist  the  temptation  to  watch  for  some 
moments  longer.  That  indiscretion  sufficed 
to  show  me  the  whole  truth. 

Yes,  this  type  of  roisterers,  who  seemed  to 
have  stepped  from  one  of  the  romances  of 
Paul  de  Kock — this  athlete,  this  despot  of 


2l8     TEN    TALES   BY   FRANQOIS   COPPfiE. 

bar-rooms  and  public -houses  —  performed 
simply  and  courageously,  in  these  lowly 
rooms  in  the  suburbs,  the  sublime  duties  of 
a  sister  of  charity.  This  intrepid  oarsman 
had  never  made  a  longer  voyage  than  to 
conduct  his  mother  to  mass  or  vespers  every 
Sunday.  This  billiard  expert  knew  only  how 
to  play  bezique.  This  trainer  of  bull-dogs 
was  the  submissive  slave  of  a  poodle.  This 
Mauvaise-Philibert  was  an  Antigone. 


III. 

The  next  morning,  on  arriving  at  the  office, 
I  asked  Meurtrier  how  he  had  employed  the 
previous  evening,  and  he  instantly  impro- 
vised, without  a  moment's  hesitation,  an  ac- 
count of  a  sharp  encounter  on  the  boulevard 
at  two  in  the  morning,  when  he  had  knocked 
down  with  a  single  blow  of  his  fist,  having 
passed  his  thumb  through  the  ring  of  his 


MY    FRIEND    MEUkTRIER. 


219 


keys,  a  terrible  street  rough.  I  listened, 
smiling  ironically,  and  thinking  to  confound 
him ;  but  remembering  how  respectable  a 
virtue  is  which  is  hidden  even  under  an  ab- 
surdity, I  struck  him  amicably  on  the  shoul- 
der, and  said,  with  conviction  : 
"  Meurtrier,  you  are  a  hero  !" 


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